A Requiem for Sylvia Plath’s ‘Mushrooms’

This time you were not writing
about Daddy,
about death,
the superficial words of Mademoiselle,
nor the colors of cadavers.

There were no hints about
cutting yourself
            carefully,

                        delicately,

all the while watching,

                                    waiting

alone

                        in your hollow, hidden crawl space.

Instead you dealt with the loneliness
of being overlooked,
snubbed
like the soft white mystery of the masses;
you praised the brave,
told the world how you, too, knew
the pain of being
stopped, obstructed, betrayed.

There is no voice to testify
that you had hoped to find strangers
willing to shove the meek out of you;
but we can fancy
that before you turned that gas stove on,
before you locked the kitchen door,
cried your final tear of despair,
 

that you had found pure deliverance,

reminding the meek, the feeble,
of who – some day – shall bear
accountability.

 

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In addition to the New Mexico Review (Spring, 2017), Max Stephan’s writing has appeared in Appalachia, the Christian Science Monitor, the Cimarron Review, Kestrel, the Broad River Review, the Kerf, the Potomac Review, Blueline, and the Louisiana Review.  In 2019, additional work is forthcoming in Slipstreamand the Main Street Rag.  Currently he is wooing publishers with a manuscript entitled Alice Said – the first book-length collection of poems solely based on mycology by one author.  Stephan is a professor at Niagara University, specializing in Contemporary American Poetry.  Learn more about Max Stephan at: www.maxstephan.net