Lisa Delan
Dispatch from the second morning of my sixth migraine hospitalization
When the nurse wakes me up at 5:30am to ply me with electrodes
I literally scream my way out of a dream. Apparently Thorazine
can pull your QT like taffy, and if it gets too long you’re out of luck.
I pass my EKG and am awarded a gelatin capsule with a hundred
tiny pearls in its casing, a pharmaceutical crown. They give you
the Benadryl first so you don’t fly out of the cuckoo’s nest when they start
the drip. In other fun facts, it turns out
squeezing Thorazine through your veins makes your nose
so stuffed that even as the drip pulls you under, you can’t sleep
because you can’t breathe. Bummer. But it’s okay
because I’m streaming the Rattlecast episode with poet Ron
Koertge, telling us that he is standing in the doorway of 86 between
the finite and the infinite inviting words through—a fine thing to be
doing at 86. Lips upturned, I drift.
Lisa Delan’s poetry has received a Best of the Net and three Pushcart Prize nominations. Her work has been featured in Burningword Literary Journal, 3rd Wednesday Magazine, Milk Press, The Wild Umbrella, American Writers Review, Anthropocene Poetry Journal, and Passengers Journal, among other publications, and she recently penned the libretto for a multi-media choral work which premiered in her adopted hometown of San Francisco, CA. When she is not writing you can find the soprano, an international performer who records for the Pentatone label, singing songs on texts by some of her favorite poets, and at lisadelan.com.
