Claire Scott

Between Two Worlds

a tentative foot
hovering over each

a world of doctors, needles,
infusions and confusions

a world of wonder and poetry
and the promise of spring

until one world wanes
like a crescent moon
taking summer’s bounty

the other captures you—                                
a crab with ragged claws                   

 

Bipolar Genes

I snuck out of the house
my mother in bed with her bottles
her breakfast coffee covered with a skin of cream
I rode my rickety Schwinn to the library
Miss Lewis looked up and smiled
let me curl up in the red leather chair
that crinkled while I got comfortable
and settled into silence

Wuthering Heights, Little Women, Pride and Prejudice
crinolined dresses and corsets, dainty tea in drawing rooms
trying on the lives of others
not necessarily better
but at least not mine
where my mother played out maudlin scenes
rivaling Medea, where she sometimes swallowed
pills and was taken away in a white van

I still go to the library when time is tough
today I opened Verghese’s The Covenant of Water
and disappeared into three generations of an Indian family
one drowning in each generation
distracting me from the bipolar genes
that run through my family like a marauding lion
sparing some, savaging others
like my mother
like my son

 

Boarding Announcements

Only one small suitcase says Plummet Airlines.
The second costs six hundred dollars
and will ride on the wing. Please note we are not
responsible for pigeon poop on your bags.
The overhead bins are used
for cremains and cadavers being returned
to their loved ones, so are not available
to our esteemed passengers on Flight 17
to Boston. Or is it Atlanta?
If your seat is 22A-2, it means
you sit on the lap of 22A-1. Enjoy
your new friend. No food, no films
no beverages, no bathrooms,
so be sure to go
to the bank before you board.
You must pay cash for extras like filtered air
or a fistful of Xanax to stave off panic
when the single engine sizzles and sputters.

Better to travel on Amtrak or Greyhound
or buy a horse and buggy from Keystone Stables
and pretend you are a pioneer.

 

 

Claire Scott is an award-winning poet who has received multiple Pushcart Prize nominations. Her work has appeared in the Atlanta Review, Bellevue Literary Review, New Ohio Review and Healing Muse among other journals. Claire is the author of Waiting to Be Called and Until I Couldn’t.