Nightmare

by Evelyn Hooven (January 2018)

There is No World Ended, Andre Masson, 1942

That shadow

Her hair abruptly

Recoiled

Amputated

By pins

Tries to move

Noiselessly

Tries to survive

On slim rations

Shivering

She starves and starves

Her cloak

Grows bulky

Bones protrude

Her breasts

Are like elbows

She is too ill

To continue

It is inappropriate

Surely

She will disappear

For reasons unknown

No shown weapon

No visible bruise

Or other obvious

Sign of violence.

One day

A trace

A strange trail

Is it dust?

Is it blood?

It is pitiful

Though necessary . . .

One morning

She is about to scream

To waken others

She must not

Waken them

They are asleep

In their cells

Some play dead

Others need

Ministering

The anesthesia

Might run out

Who will assist

With this instrument?

It is questionable

You are no criminal

The older pills are illicit.

She understands

Collapses soundlessly

Her bones

Fly through the keyhole

Her cloak

Useful, plausible

Covers the furniture

You are safe

The day, again,

Is yours.

____________________________

Evelyn Hooven graduated from Mount Holyoke College and received her M.A. from Yale University, where she also studied at The Yale School of Drama. A member of the Dramatists’ Guild, she has had presentations of her verse dramas at several theatrical venues, including The Maxwell Anderson Playwrights Series in Greenwich, CT (after a state-wide competition) and The Poet’s Theatre in Cambridge, MA (result of a national competition). Her poems and translations from the French have appeared in ART TIMES, Chelsea, The Literary Review, THE SHOp: A Magazine of Poetry (in Ireland), The Tribeca Poetry Review, Vallum (in Montreal), and other journals, and her literary criticism in Oxford University’s Essays in Criticism.