Tornado

By Eve Lyons

This is me:
protected but trapped
while the industry twists around me.
This is a factory:
churning out medications and patients
on assembly lines
but leaving them scattered like
a devastated trailer park,
they must conform to a list of behavioral criteria
in the DSM-V and they must
have problems that can be solved in
twenty-four sessions or less.
This is me:
Sitting in my office, my degree,
my world of art and poetry and music
that do not fit
into this system.

Tell me how a fifteen-year-old Black girl
who has been bounced from family member
to family member, who has lost her hearing
without knowing how, who believes that
meeting with a therapist means she is stupid,
tell me how she fits into this system.
Tell me what kind of drugs could best
solve her problems.
Tell me how this system can help the
eighteen-year-old boy who just came out,
only to find himself raped by two men
who were supposed to be friends?

Isolation of affect: The ability to talk about trauma
without any emotional expression.

It is a survival skill in this system
that re-traumatizes us
every day we live in it.
There are days when I feel useless
against the tornado
which sends my paycheck every month.
Twisters are deceptive,
I learned that in Texas,
which has the most tornadoes,
and deadlier ones.
You could watch one
wipe out your neighbors.
You never know
if it will destroy you
till it already has.

………………………………………………………………….

Eve Lyons is a poet and fiction writer living in the Boston area. Her work has appeared in Lilith, New Vilna Review, Word Riot, Literary Mama, Hip Mama, Mutha magazine, and several anthologies.

Reading recommendation: Ten Days in a Mad-House by Nellie Bly.