The only way is through.
At the moment it seems impossible:
No thoroughfare.
I mean how do you trust yourself?
And your neurotransmitters?
And that’s just one of many
Things to worry about.
Why wake up in the morning?
There must be something that makes it worthwhile.
There must be something
To fix or shrink.
I’ve never seen one
That didn’t make me worse.
And there’s something to drink
On the top shelf.
“Not the cause, just the symptoms.”
You want to know about my mother?
I’ll tell you about my mother.
[Violence ensues,]
And watch out
For charged particles.
They can be very aggressive.
This page is intentionally left blank,
And the one behind it
Is unintelligible.
Ian Ganassi’s work has appeared or will appear in numerous literary magazines, including, New American Writing; The American Journal of Poetry; First Literary Review-East; Clockwise Cat; and The Yale Review; among many others. His poetry collection Mean Numbers was published in 2016. His new collection, True for the Moment, is forthcoming from MadHat Press. Selections from an ongoing collaboration with a painter can be found at www.thecorpses.com.
