Ward Stories

NEW YORK CITYVOICES: May/June 1999

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Cindy Sostchen, Poetry Editor
 

Permit me this indulgence! While this column is not intended to be a forum for my own work, I would like to share some poems with you. In re-reading these, I think, "what a different place I'm in now...," which makes me even more proud of the changes I have made.

I did make one observation. New York City Voices previously printed "The Crystal Palace (Revisited)" by Samuel Pirro (about a hospital admission) and "Keys to the Kingdom" by Marvin Spieler (the "kingdom" in this case being Bellevue Hospital). My poem entitled "Ebony Towers" refers to Tower Seven of St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital Center (psychiatric ward). While we all can agree that health is more desirable, sometimes the ward on which we are confined becomes our sanctuary and we come to think of it in an exalted way.

My reminder to all: let's opt for well-being!
 

Metamorphosis

By Cindy Sostchen

(1)
an ache
as deep as an ugly canyon
opens its vast mouth
    to swallow me
but my half-eaten mind
still waxes tangential

(2)
the growl of an odd hunger
this gravel of discontent
    like a sideshow mirror with its distant angles
this angular anger

(3)
underneath the rubble
I feel my gold feathers unfolding,
wing by silken wing,
and from a porcelain volcano
    I've become a charming bird
 

Ebony Towers

By Cindy Sostchen

Babbling brooks,
            silent streams,
                        blank slates
prisoners suffering from morning sickness
    we eat gibberish at every meal
    toss and turn like restless mice
when the womb of night births her damaged babies
    we hang from shoelace strings
            or silly orange clouds
            nooses around our neck (ropes of confusion)
we drown in old, bad blood

What vital misfits we are!
cut from the same troubled tree
our empty tears mingle
    but never taste the same
 

i am gray

By Cindy Sostchen

I am gray
    like stale and stagnant english fog
I am gray
    like molten lead
I even smell like something grey
but my poems are technicolor things
        orange
                green
                        blue
                                indigo
                                        violet
and too much red!
I hate red
    the crimson beats of a swollen heart
    with red leaky valves
    my innards scrawled in blood
    on the silent page

I am gray
    but my poems are kaleidoscopic things
    and I want to be a rain-bow poem
    (neither harlot red or muted gray)
... THE WHOLE SPECTRUM
 

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