The Phone Call
(To be read in the voice of Anne Sexton)
Karen Schnurstein
Doc wasn’t even there Wednesday night when I’d burrowed twenty minutes through dark to claw at his door. You should’ve seen me bite into a tree and step out of my shoe like a drunken Cinderella. I yelled up at the Dog Star, “I need you!” like some god was listening. Like Doc was crouched in the yews, waiting with confetti.
Thursday, after you called, Linda started screaming. She’d lifted the toilet lid to go poop and there was this rat. It rainbowed out of the bowl, toned, and shimmery.
On Friday I drove west from Boston. Some show for shrinks was on the radio. They played games with lingo, games about me. Me and pillbox, my suicide agenda, my wretched train rides in, my spurious bike trips home again. Do you know my hospital’s been remodeled?
I dreamed last night I jogged around naked, my breasts beaming like they were looking around. Then I dreamed I was holding this egg–warmth and wetness. I cradled it in my hand and down between my legs. When I woke, I’d wet the bed.
So, I’ve been unscrambling our weeping daughter’s head: “Linda, sweat pea, it’s not the rat.” No, not the rat at all. “Rats aren’t bad,” I tell her, “Rats are just like you. They want someplace to sleep, someplace to play, someplace to live and go poop.”
Even I’m afraid of that toilet now. But never the rat do I fear. It’s his hunger, that rotting tongue, those teeth, his oily possibility.
This afternoon I watched PBS, rocked Linda to sleep in my lap. Peter, Paul, and Mary were on, singing their swarthy American songs. When Mary chorused “Day is Done,” all rocking, golden, and smiling, I felt Death squeeze in and straddle my shoulders, black, biting his nails. Mary knew this–her mouth, sore as mine, singing All will be well and All will be well over and over again. Death reached ’round with drain plugs and stoppered my breasts–and gnawed his lips. Then he said: “Poetry can’t sling me out of the cabinet. Therapy won’t seduce me out of your car.”
I’m sorry, but your wife’s all wet. Even our daughter, whom I hold like some talisman under my chin–even Linda can’t blow the grease off my wings. The cabinets are singing, my wrists crunching in . . . Doc Orne is sailing further and further on to the sun. Kayo, you shouldn’t come home. Because when you are here, spewing your Santa mirth and good jokes, pouring me scotch, smirking and frying eggs sunny side up, that is life. And life’s something I forgot. Something I never learned to stock. Like home, someplace I’ve stopped going. Like my father, the flip map I’ve cut up. It’s someplace Linda knows until babysitters come wearing luggage, and no one pretends she’s their doll, no one tells poop tales, no one makes friends with the rat for months.
(To be read in the voice of Anne Sexton)
Karen Schnurstein
Doc wasn’t even there Wednesday night when I’d burrowed twenty minutes through dark to claw at his door. You should’ve seen me bite into a tree and step out of my shoe like a drunken Cinderella. I yelled up at the Dog Star, “I need you!” like some god was listening. Like Doc was crouched in the yews, waiting with confetti.
Thursday, after you called, Linda started screaming. She’d lifted the toilet lid to go poop and there was this rat. It rainbowed out of the bowl, toned, and shimmery.
On Friday I drove west from Boston. Some show for shrinks was on the radio. They played games with lingo, games about me. Me and pillbox, my suicide agenda, my wretched train rides in, my spurious bike trips home again. Do you know my hospital’s been remodeled?
I dreamed last night I jogged around naked, my breasts beaming like they were looking around. Then I dreamed I was holding this egg–warmth and wetness. I cradled it in my hand and down between my legs. When I woke, I’d wet the bed.
So, I’ve been unscrambling our weeping daughter’s head: “Linda, sweat pea, it’s not the rat.” No, not the rat at all. “Rats aren’t bad,” I tell her, “Rats are just like you. They want someplace to sleep, someplace to play, someplace to live and go poop.”
Even I’m afraid of that toilet now. But never the rat do I fear. It’s his hunger, that rotting tongue, those teeth, his oily possibility.
This afternoon I watched PBS, rocked Linda to sleep in my lap. Peter, Paul, and Mary were on, singing their swarthy American songs. When Mary chorused “Day is Done,” all rocking, golden, and smiling, I felt Death squeeze in and straddle my shoulders, black, biting his nails. Mary knew this–her mouth, sore as mine, singing All will be well and All will be well over and over again. Death reached ’round with drain plugs and stoppered my breasts–and gnawed his lips. Then he said: “Poetry can’t sling me out of the cabinet. Therapy won’t seduce me out of your car.”
I’m sorry, but your wife’s all wet. Even our daughter, whom I hold like some talisman under my chin–even Linda can’t blow the grease off my wings. The cabinets are singing, my wrists crunching in . . . Doc Orne is sailing further and further on to the sun. Kayo, you shouldn’t come home. Because when you are here, spewing your Santa mirth and good jokes, pouring me scotch, smirking and frying eggs sunny side up, that is life. And life’s something I forgot. Something I never learned to stock. Like home, someplace I’ve stopped going. Like my father, the flip map I’ve cut up. It’s someplace Linda knows until babysitters come wearing luggage, and no one pretends she’s their doll, no one tells poop tales, no one makes friends with the rat for months.