POETRY

Bloom

By Rebecca Morgan Frank     VOLUME 48.1

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Anna Shuleit's 2003 installation, "Bloom," at the empty Mass Mental Health Center, involved filling the abandoned spaces with flowers.

I saw only the hint of something godlike, removed
from the mineral and green of the yard

outside the chapel. The hospital's peeling
halls packed with blossoms, as if

mold had become seed and everything rancid,
fetid, bloomed. I walked into your old

room. A rusted frame, the window pane
jagged beneath the bolted bars. A sky

outside would have been yours before
they tore out your eyes. That's what you said,

their lightning blazed your body and made
the world go dark. The edges dull and then

the pills drowned out the sound and then, then,
you said, you repeated again and again,

then, they took my legs my arms, my
mouth, the tongue a rag that absorbed

no taste. A life of wasting muscle and
teeth turned black from the sugary contra-

band your father smuggled in his pockets,
doubled by the way you filled your cup

with more sugar than tea. You showed me
pictures of the day they set you free. You

had killed a man, served the rest of your
childhood. Four months later, had me.

Your burial was early, my freedom
late. I fingered the bars, the wet glass

tear, and imagined your escape. We
were condemned: the building, your body

and mine that came of you and some
other part. Silence, seeping through.


REBECCA MORGAN FRANK’s poetry collection is Little Murders Everywhere. Her poems have appeared in Guernica, Ploughshares, Crazyhorse, The Georgia Review, Prairie Schooner, Poetry Daily, and elsewhere. Her manuscript-in-progress received the Poetry Society of America’s Alice Fay di Castagnola Award in 2010. She teaches at the University of Southern Mississippi's Center for Writers and edits the online magazine Memorious.

VOLUME 48.1