After Wallace Stevens’ “The Emperor of Ice-Cream”
Call the roller of straightjackets,
The muscular one, and bid him sling
In Dixie cups cylindric pills.
Let the nurses needle in such ways
As they are used to prick, and let the schizos
Bring slobber in last week’s napkins.
Let be be the real of the seem.
The only doctor is the doctor of electric dreams.
Take from the cabinets of instruments,
Lacking the rusted handle, that mouthguard
On which I inscribed teeth marks once
And shove it so as to muzzle my maw.
If my wet-flick tongue protrudes, it licks
To show the voices are not me, and tricks.
Let the electrodes repair the seam.
The only doctor is the doctor of electric dreams.
Header photograph © Asher.
Jake Bailey is a schizotypal confessionalist in Antioch University Los Angeles’ MFA program and an associate editor of Lunch Ticket. He has forthcoming work in formercactus, Door is a Jar, Mohave He[art] Review, The Hellebore, Rhythm of the Bones: Dark Marrow, Neon Mariposa Magazine, and FlyPaper Magazine and has been published in catheXis Northwest Press, The Esthetic Apostle, The Laurel Review, and Prairie Light Review. Jake lives in Chicago with his girlfriend and three dogs.
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