State Hospital South

“The reader must believe that it is a matter of an actual sickness and not a phenomenon of the age, of a sickness which is related to the essence of the human being and his central possibilities of expression and which is involved in an entire life.” –Artaud

Sometimes I go to the slough from the state hospital
and lie as the sticky stubble of snake grass filters
through my shirt, 

thinking. Tonight I am going to say my prayers
in my head instead of kneeling against my head,
instead of kneeling against my bed
on my back. As a sad old pillow tilts
my head, I stare up thinking. 

But the Risperdal needed to stop me–
a clasp over the delusions.
I only got visits by those who really cared about me.

In the wetland, as the quiet hospital 
campus above lapses into activity hour,
I build a handcuff out of snake grass, but
unable to complete both wrists,
I instead lie on my hands.

How long did the cuts from the handcuffs
last? Those first days were timeless,
grafted into a location outside of the days
it took for me to allocate myself. (I am not lying 
across the room from a terrorist. Priesthood blessings 
from family are for their comfort, and my family just wants 
me to be okay. These pills I take are not poison). But I am 
vulnerable, trying to sleep and knowing. As it gets 
later into the night, the leftover glow in the dark
stars lose charge. 

All animals should have identities
somewhere from the knowledge
bestowed on me by my dead zoologist father.
It seems all psychosis comes from there,
from death and car wrecks just out of the subdivision.

I will always have this blue fabric sling of schizo-
effective disorder with white lines of clouds 
holding my head together.
I will have hospital trips and visitors
but somehow always need more
trips to the hospital. A trip without my family
where I swore to take more than fifteen tabs
of ibuprofen. I will feel the DVD menu screen
recirculate in the room below. 

I will not tell how I crushed
my father’s glasses that he had left under
the dashboard in his old truck. A death comes for some
during the night. I came to the hospital for the mainlined Ativan,
not for my family to help.
In this slough, I carry the Scrabble dictionary
as I head to the hospital gate. It’s a newer version
to replace the dictionary I stole two years ago.

I remember the night hallway, 
the special private room for families,
and the blessings I heard and felt on my head.

In this slough, recovered from the drainage
of the Snake River, a gallant Great Blue Heron
attaches itself to the swamp and pokes
holes through the leopard frogs below.

I wait for the hell of a loss of control
to unconsciousness, my father next
to my bed, wood splitter in hand, me
awaiting judgment in a new kind of hell.

ξ

Jeff Pearson is a graduate of the University of Idaho’s MFA Program, where he works as Assistant Director of the Writing Center, and he's a past resident of Idaho State Hospital South. In 2017 he won Permafrost's New Alchemy Prize for "User Review of Medications." His chapbooks include: Sick Bed and Location Services, which can be found on his website: http://poesyjeffpearson.com. He is the former Managing Editor for Blood Orange Review and current Poetry Editor for 5x5 Lit Mag. He tweets at @legoverleg.