Esther Altshul Helfgott: Poems




 

Driving Home from Mother's House Sister Father's Skull  At Sixteen  Dream  The Old Woman  If I Could Stop the Words  At the Hospital  The Psychiatrist and the Poet Dear Pat


At the Hospital

I lock myself inside the space of poem
just as I did the bathroom when I was three.
Mother and father yell
and beg and pound for me to come out,
but I am steadfast. I watch the pee
run over my thighs
and into the space behind my knees
and down the backs of my legs
until the tops of my socks are sopping wet
and my feet are sloshy in my shoes.
My brother and sister demand
news of our mother's condition
as my pen scribbles sounds of ink
along the edges of my paper
until words come together on the page.
I look from my shoes to the quivering door
as firemen meander through the mind of dream
and doctors continue on -
even after the lock is broken.
 


"At the Hospital" was originally published in The Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Review, vol. 4, no. 1, 1993  (Vancouver Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Society, Vancouver, British Columbia, Katalina Bartok, M.D., Ph.D., editor)

Driving Home from Mother's House Sister Father's Skull  At Sixteen  Dream  The Old Woman  If I Could Stop the Words  At the Hospital  The Psychiatrist and the Poet Dear Pat


Esther Altshul Helfgott is a poet and independent scholar working on a biography of Edith Buxbaum. She earned her Ph.D. in history from the University of Washington with a thesis on the politics and poetry of Holocaust poet, Irena Klepfisz. Esther's poems and articles have appeared in numerous periodicals, and she is the author of The Homeless One: A Poem in Many Voices (Kota Press, 2000). In her work as a writing teacher, Esther helps poets and writers bring their authentic voices to the page. She can be reached at: eahelfgott2@comcast.net 
 Esther Altshul Helfgott's Home Page
Esther Altshul Helfgott's neue Website >THE EDITH BUXBAUM JOURNAL<

 


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