Madelyn Garner

Negative

For months, I have been a trembling heart.  Figure sifting for clues that could tell
doctors at what point my sister’s mind, once sowing and reaping, began its drought.
I listen as specialists scratch and scrawl orders. (Positive) They will find the reason as
they order more and more tests, all the while sticking pins in the grid of a possible diagnosis: Stockpiled iron. (Negative) Broken capillaries swollen into rivulets through which blood might be shambling. (Negative) Stone clots. (Negative) (Negative) Bad living she smeared on her brain’s thickening walls over so many misspent years. (Inconclusive)  All they need to do is to ask her is to count by sevens from a hundred. Write her name in inkwell cursive. The day’s date.

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.