Susanna Stephens

American Confessional

Last night, I bled
from my neck
into the indigo depths
of a dream.
 
A pinhole
appeared
on the left side,
next to a freckle.
 
The kind of freckle 
that might make my
corpse identifiable,
if it ever came to that.
 
The wound did not
register, neither
as an injury, nor
as a portal to Hades.
 
Only the smell of metallic
sulfur and the whirring
of a ceiling fan
on low.
 
Perhaps I was disturbed
by how methodically
I washed my children’s
clothing in the kitchen sink.
 
Humming softly,
oblivious to multiplying
crimson plops
in sudsy water.

If I Can Be Trusted

If I can be trusted as a reliable narrator, which my mother often could
not do, then my teenage journal would betray an autumn of studying
Calista Flockheart’s androgynous figure and furtive midnight calisthenics
by the high school until all the elms shedded their last foliage.
 
If I can be trusted as a reliable theorist, which I often can not be,
then I would draw a jagged fault line between generations,
naming one or two standard methods for wedging a gap
between daughter and mother. Fasting and pills were my default.
 
If I can be trusted as a reliable lover, which I often can not embody,
then I would rush every bit of need and refusal of need into one seed,
swallow it whole, hope for a modulated mixture, then dance to Laura Marling
in the living room. Naked. In the dark. Possibly alone.
 
If I can be trusted as a reliable mother, which I often can not fulfill,
then I would let myself sing alto while my children play with baritone and
soprano. Unwavering in my adoration, even when they tell me to go away,
which they will reliably do.

 
Susanna Stephens, Ph.D. is a psychoanalyst and poet living in Brooklyn, NY. Her work is published or forthcoming in Rust & Moth, ONE ART, Thimble Literary Magazine, Red Eft Review, and Eunoia Review. In addition to writing, she maintains a private practice in Manhattan.