Southern Review, The - Haldol
I’ll wear a long-sleeve shirt with cuffs
for protection–never restrain
an escalated girl alone–since the night
the Haldol wore so thin
she sputtered saliva and flung her weight
against each lock on the ward
I’d bolted, tight as the door of seclusion,
which only opens out
so she can’t kick it shut and trap us in.
That night her teeth chewed the skin up
and down my arms, leaving
ragged welts and contusions the doctors
in Emergency merely stitched
with scars. Now the pulse of each ambulance
sends me deeper into what
fluorescent light refracts, the tick and jump
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of dayroom walls. Now another
new foster father hugs the girl, whose posture
we’ve perfected over years with straitjackets,
dorsal horn of her spinal cord
so medicated he can’t imagine bandages
like mine might ever wrap
his arms. So today I’ll remind her how to slip
her arms willingly into the satin
sleeves of a warm coat, I’ll watch her
button it tight as the jaws
that clenched, the human bite that won’t let go.
COPYRIGHT 1998 Louisiana State University
COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning
