Visiting Day on the Lawn, Pilgrim State Mental Hospital, A BxW Still Life 1978
Standing on the Commons, between identical brick buildings for the living brain dead, she is the reaper of tin foil, discarded packets, empty crushed paper cups, collecting The Offal. She gathers the field methodically, storing The Refuse in a soiled black denim sling. All morning, she gathers, listening to tin top 40s music, transmitted directly to the neural receptors by plastic earpieces. Voices whisper, in between half notes, telling the secrets of Runing, this Gathering will bring. By late afternoon, she is bent low, inspecting the lawn, inch by square inch, inscribing circles with her feet, defining the lost horizons of her mind, impelled by an epic battle of the bands, twin radios tuned to opposing stations for the different ears of her separate brains. By nightfall she is a stark silhouette against sky, shrouded by a soiled, black shawl, eyes like dying suns flashing the dark. Visiting Day on the Psychiatric Ward Looking for mother, long ago lost inside, no one remembers the face that coincides with her name registered in their daily logs or the plastic bracelets she collects on her wrists; each time they admit her, she gets a new one to play with during each long night she never sleeps, whistling transcendental etudes by Liszt, slightly off key; we are searching shallow worn faces cluttering violent halls, idiot savants reciting perpetual calendars, all the ruling names of A Holy Roman Empire, toothless old ladies lip synch old time movies, their hands held overhead, silently snapping together, extra mouths imitating an untouchable screen, in a corner they sit and pee, marking their places with an indelible scent; years after death no one will invade their territorial space Revisiting Day on the Psychiatric Ward Nursing station to nowhere, rubble strewn, stripped-of- asbestos pipes, dropped ceilings, holes punched by jackhammers, pick ax, crampons poked in the walls of hell, peeling paint, filmy as onion skin, patient evaluations, ghost charts yellowed by seepage, urine, unidentified falling objects, clots of paper, graphs, rolled-into-bundles sheets, inmate blouses and pants; on the wall beneath the front desk, painted in blood, two words: WELCOME HOME Pilgrim State Hospital Current Status: Abandoned Snow dust on the broken branches, the overgrown side walks, on twin evergreen, pine barren shrubs by entrance, first floors of abandoned Medical Arts Center set back on the wild, white, matted lawn; the empty, punched out windows, bent bars silent as memory's repressed scream. Alan Catlin The first poem was previously published in Alan Catlin's chapbook, Black and White in Color, which won the Mississinewa Press Prize. The second poem was previously published in Alan Catlin's chapbook of the same name, Visiting Day on the Psychiatric Ward. It was published by Pudding Publications and was first runner up in the Looking Glass Chapbook Competition. Alan Catlin has been publishing for parts of five decades. His work derives from many interests from Art, music and literature to the bars he lived and worked in. His many full length books and chapbooks include the ekphrastic collection "Effects of Sunlight on Fog" from Bright Hill Press and, more recently from Future Cycle Press, "American Odyssey" largely derived from photos by Mary Ellen Mark and photos by photographers killed in Vietnam. Forthcoming is "Wild Beauty", also largely ekphrastic, from Future Cycle Press. His chapbook, "Blue Velvet" (poems inspired by movies) won the 2017 Slipstream Chapbook Award.
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November 2024
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