Matthew Feinstein
Spending the MFA Residency at Virginia Baptist
The hospital stretchers wheeled the dead
in an orderly line like ants would crumbs.
I wanted to leave—head back to residency,
so I could spill my poetry into readers
like the blooded washcloth wrung out
into the bucket beside me. Nurses told me
I’m going away for a while. I called my mother
using the officer’s phone before he detained me.
He, too, was confused why he needed to transport me,
unhostile and bewildered, to the psychiatric facility.
A foreign state. Lawless, lawless place. The nurses
offended by my cursing the lord that the needle
comes out to quiet me. I ran into my room—
tried to slam the door shut on those nurses ready
to inject me. But it was lockless, so I complied
as the checkmated must. Forced into my room
every single night. Seven days in those four
white walls. But this place was no heaven.
I learned how to submit on demand—
swallowing pill after violating pill. Sedation
if too well-rested. If too loud. If slandering
Christianity. My wound was none of these things.
Instead, the young patient checked in on day four.
The way he twitched his head side to side,
exclaiming he’ll fight anyone. Fuck a bitch up.
I tried making conversation, but my kindness
turned me suspect, and he grabbed my collar
to choke me out. That, too, wasn’t my wound.
Rather, the way he was snatched off me. How he
squirmed under a sea of arms until injected
and dragged to bed like a tranquilized zoo animal.
I was still kind toward him. The morning
of discharge, the young patient built the courage
to ask me about my hobbies. I told him I write poetry,
told him I was flying back to California. Why
can’t you stay? His lonely glass eyes…
they split me in the most unnatural ways
in an orderly line like ants would crumbs.
I wanted to leave—head back to residency,
so I could spill my poetry into readers
like the blooded washcloth wrung out
into the bucket beside me. Nurses told me
I’m going away for a while. I called my mother
using the officer’s phone before he detained me.
He, too, was confused why he needed to transport me,
unhostile and bewildered, to the psychiatric facility.
A foreign state. Lawless, lawless place. The nurses
offended by my cursing the lord that the needle
comes out to quiet me. I ran into my room—
tried to slam the door shut on those nurses ready
to inject me. But it was lockless, so I complied
as the checkmated must. Forced into my room
every single night. Seven days in those four
white walls. But this place was no heaven.
I learned how to submit on demand—
swallowing pill after violating pill. Sedation
if too well-rested. If too loud. If slandering
Christianity. My wound was none of these things.
Instead, the young patient checked in on day four.
The way he twitched his head side to side,
exclaiming he’ll fight anyone. Fuck a bitch up.
I tried making conversation, but my kindness
turned me suspect, and he grabbed my collar
to choke me out. That, too, wasn’t my wound.
Rather, the way he was snatched off me. How he
squirmed under a sea of arms until injected
and dragged to bed like a tranquilized zoo animal.
I was still kind toward him. The morning
of discharge, the young patient built the courage
to ask me about my hobbies. I told him I write poetry,
told him I was flying back to California. Why
can’t you stay? His lonely glass eyes…
they split me in the most unnatural ways
Biography
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Matthew Feinstein is a neurodivergent poet from Tracy, California. He is currently pursuing an MFA at Randolph College and is the author of Breeds of Breath (Alien Buddha Press, 2020). His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Poetry Online, Hobart (After Dark), Heavy Feather Review, and elsewhere. He is the founding editor of Plum Recruit.
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