Sadie Balsom
Pharmacy Poem
I feel better in the pharmacy. Swaddled by
vocabulary my fungus-addled brain can’t comprehend:
cocoglucoside, sodium laurel. As if someone
might hand me a coconut with a side of sugar-water.
As if someone would adorn me with a laurel wreath.
In sleep paralysis, I watch a parking garage crumble
in real time, the concrete sending up a halo of dust. It hovers
like a crown of disaster for just one second
after the middle has already dropped out.
Isn’t this what I’ve been doing for years,
hovering like a crown of disaster
after the middle has already dropped out?
Not that the pharmacist needs to know.
For small worries, you can pick up a bottle of potion,
a cream, a poultice, a sweet-smelling hand soap.
No need to explain that you are hoping to cure some larger,
more chronic emergency.
Under these fluorescent lights there is a place called
ordinary, sanctuary. You can take off your jacket.
Sink to your knees in the aisles.
The body that has worn you will gladly discard you
onto the floor. In other words, take the time
the day has given you. Take the little mint they offer you
by the till. Slip it onto your tongue.
vocabulary my fungus-addled brain can’t comprehend:
cocoglucoside, sodium laurel. As if someone
might hand me a coconut with a side of sugar-water.
As if someone would adorn me with a laurel wreath.
In sleep paralysis, I watch a parking garage crumble
in real time, the concrete sending up a halo of dust. It hovers
like a crown of disaster for just one second
after the middle has already dropped out.
Isn’t this what I’ve been doing for years,
hovering like a crown of disaster
after the middle has already dropped out?
Not that the pharmacist needs to know.
For small worries, you can pick up a bottle of potion,
a cream, a poultice, a sweet-smelling hand soap.
No need to explain that you are hoping to cure some larger,
more chronic emergency.
Under these fluorescent lights there is a place called
ordinary, sanctuary. You can take off your jacket.
Sink to your knees in the aisles.
The body that has worn you will gladly discard you
onto the floor. In other words, take the time
the day has given you. Take the little mint they offer you
by the till. Slip it onto your tongue.
--
Sadie Balsom is a poet and data engineer living in Los Angeles. She has a masters in comparative literature from the Sorbonne, and has studied poetry at Lewis & Clark College. In writing she is interested in surrealism, humor, iconography, and dreams which solve our problems with their own alchemical logic.
Sadie Balsom is a poet and data engineer living in Los Angeles. She has a masters in comparative literature from the Sorbonne, and has studied poetry at Lewis & Clark College. In writing she is interested in surrealism, humor, iconography, and dreams which solve our problems with their own alchemical logic.