The Symptoms

• Concentration’s shot,
• my mind is full of light,
• my fingers smell deeper
• than honey.
• My heart is in my thighs,
• my groin — you don’t even
• want to know — it’s in my knees,
• my nose, it’s everywhere.
• I’m so distracted
• I leave the doors unlocked,
• practically hide the vibrator
• in the refrigerator.
• The smoke alarm goes off.
• I cruise the floors of my
• bungalow ’til they’re blue.
• Every week
• I clean my house for you.
• I’m starving and I can’t
• sleep, exhausted and I can’t eat.
• What have you done to me?
• Cure me. Please.
• Make it worse.

Sarah Maclay currently teaches creative writing and literature at Loyola Marymount University and conducts periodic workshops at the Ruskin Art Club and Beyond Baroque. She is book review editor for Poetry International. “The Symptoms” is from her recent collection, Music for the Black Room, which, like her previous two collections, was published by the University of Tampa Press. She lives in Venice, California. Author’s photo by Mark Lipson. The poem is reprinted by permission of the University of Tampa Press.