Elegy for Kurt by Susannah Simpson

          Psychiatric Ward, Bed 23 Window      

 

When pleaded with to finish

your dinner tray, you say:

 

I am contemplating the virtues

of the mind vs. the sins of the flesh.

 

You believed, to feed yourself

fed all Evil in the world.

 

As war news blossomed on TV,

you became thinner, then cadaverous.

 

A doctor’s son, you had been stuffed

full of promise, Catholic school and Latin verbs.

 

Lamb of God—you take away

the sins of the world, have mercy.

 

Soon your crisp, plaid shirts and khaki

pants hung and billowed, sails on the mast,

 

and your speech came like purple loosestrife

along the expressway, unexpected bursts of color

 

shuddering from the sheer force

of what passes by.

 

---

Susannah W. Simpson’s work has been published in The North American Review, The Potomac, The Wisconsin Review, South Carolina Review, POET, Nimrod International, Poet Lore, Salamander, and Xavier Review, among others. Her book, Geography of Love & Exile, was published by Cervena Barva Press in December, 2016 (Somerset, MA).