Madelyn Garner

Diagnosis

My sister makes me promise not to say it.

If there are no lab results, there are no symptoms
lurking within cellular walls:

no hair loss/tremors/hallucinations/
the mouth thinned to slash.

And no stigmata in blue or rust. Or needle pricks.
Or brain tissue sliced and mounted on glass.

Not one reason to howl or
light candles of bleeding tallow.

Each day another ordinary day.
This day. 

Day to wet a finger,
hold it to the wind and speak

only of the weather.

Recent winner of The Western Humanities Review Poetry Prize, and runner-up for the Humboldt Prize, Florida Review, Madelyn Garner’s writing has appeared in The Best American Poetry, Alaska Quarterly Review, Laurel Review, Sand Hills, Salamander, Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, Tar River, Pembroke Magazine, The Pinch, and Southern Indiana Review, among others.  She is the co-editor of the poetry anthology, Collecting Life: Poets on Objects Known and Imagined.  Her debut poetry manuscript, Hum of Our Blood, winner of Tupelo/3: A Taos Press July Open, was published in 2017.