Poems Found in January

These are the first offering for my Honors Thesis, which will be a series of poems all based on or tangentially inspired by mental illnesses, exploring the idea of what affects and composes identity.

These four poems are based on the case of January Schofield, a severely schizophrenic six-year-old. You can find out more about her here:
http://www.latimes.com/features/health/la-he-schizophrenia29-2009jun29,0,4834892.story



Poems Found in January


Jan. 7, 2009:
Patient is psychotic; talking to rats, naming them the days of the week...

Sunday
there is a new hung skin,
having thickened on the fence overday.
the brimming night rat
bites out
the lollopping dance.

Monday
punch drunk. this rat
seizes
and restrains.

Tuesday
everything is bright and huge
the howling yellow expands so far
all rats streaming for the open edges

Wednesday
the chokehold day.
400-the-Cat is
bossing

Thursday
Grip-Tight and
Bite-Hard snarl. ankle spitkickingchoke
clasping, pinch pricking griptight and
bitehard cuddle,
whiskers

Friday
boatride home,
faint and floating
rats curled on the soft woman's shoulders

Saturday
bileblack chalkboard and a small
chalk hand
drawing.
3 strokes are 3 angles,
eye, eye:
400
stalking



On the Shores of Calalini

The ocean is always January
rain-dark and pounding

Summer shores with smooth white buildings,
numbers trot through the streets,
birds perching on their tops.
Pebbled walkways and
fine green light.

When the temperature rises,
the buildings scribble out. Wednesday finds her
toothsome
on the shore border.

Like filmstrips overlaid, this place
and that place. She sat on my lap and said
"She's not pregnant anymore!" to someone who wasn't there.

The fear that our own eyes are half-closed and wisdom
or fear keeps them.
Like film negatives overlaid: the regular
and the real.



Tea Party with 400-the-Cat

"Pussycat pussycat, where have you been?"
"I've been up to London to visit the Queen."
"Pussycat pussycat, what did you dare?"
"I frightened a little mouse under her chair."

Furiously twining
fingers and flipping wrists wildly,
she passes out
sandwiches. Each has a gaunt layer
of butter to keep them dry.
Watercress and goat cheese,
34 and 200.
Cucumber and egg,
100 degrees and 24 hours.

When all the numbers double,
then the scones come out, scarred with clotted
cream. The milk is served already with lemons
but the crusted sugar cubes must be scraped,
into the tidy shape.
July 8, 2008: Patient wants order and perfection in play, toys, stories.

The milk is spoiled and spilt
before the boiling of
a green tea called Gunpowder.
The numbers and the birds
and the rats clatter their cups

400 always pours the tea.



January Living

Dyplopia, the double vision: the regular and the real.
is found overlaid with this other -ia
mania and phrenia
and the IA, Indigo Abuse,
the forum for indigo children.

I hate the blindness set on by optomism,
optometry, the business of openness.
The eyes half-collapsed, the child half-consumed
fears and sees more

"I'd like to see this child do well and escape
a lifetime of antipsychotics"
notably, not
of 400 and Wednesday

I believe that to live a January
one must first close eyes to the other eleven
and themself. Those indigo seas
are boiling in the Calalini sun.