“Can I have a light?”

What was that sudden spark in her eyes?
that flame
from cloudy, dormant pupils,
when I lit her cigarette?

The sudden driving ambition
to inhale,
the sunken chest’s almost boastful expansion.
The smoke filling the yawning cavity.
A woman of substance...
until she exhaled.

©1998, Douglas Holder

And there you were
dumbfounded, walking the ward--
after spraying John Harvard’s statue
a crimson red
The Japanese tourist
snapping your picture
as if you were part of the attraction.

Carted away from the scene
a yearly performance
by a fifty-year-old
sweating
in a soiled tweed jacket
smiling sheepishly
with the rotting stumps of teeth
an omen of your insides.
Still
demanding an explanation
for your expulsion
from these, effete ivied walls
waiting to register in the Spring
as your skin literally
crawls.

©1998, Douglas Holder

Both of these poems take place at McLean Hospital and were in Doug Holder’s 1998 collection: Poems of Boston and Just Beyond: From The Back Bay to the Back Ward (Ibbetson Street Press). Doug is the founder of Ibbetson Street Press and the arts editor of The Somerville News.

Back to the article > “McLean Hospital: Poetry on the Psychiatric Ward,” by Doug Holder