Madelyn Garner

So Difficult Watching You

Turn transparent,
bones rattling in glass

as your heart pumps phosphorous
through the long lanes of veins

narrowing from symptoms
with no termination,

drugs which provide only temporary relief.

The way you wake from the oblivion of dreams
to the burn of shooting stars,

wondering what has slit
skin to scream—

set cells on fire.  You tell me
you would settle for just one day

when all that is needed
is lavender tea,

a stroll in the neighborhood park.

I know, I answer, wishing I could erase
the scorch and slash; be a fire-eater

who swallows your suffering
in whole bites

until there is nothing left but ash.

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.