by Lindsay Stewart
Stunt girl1
I practiced insanity in the mirror to satisfy
the hundreds, said my own name aloud until
it lost all meaning. Nellie, Nell-ie, Nellie.
How will you get me out after I once get in?
It was never a question of who I was or how
long I might be there. L gave me a spoon,
E a small pinecone she had kept safe in her
mouth for over an hour. J pressed a lock of her
hair into my palm, silently, like an heirloom.
My girls, forgive me. Each time they praise
or slander me, I conjure your faces–a single
feature, whatever I can summon. If nowhere else
on earth, you are held tenderly in my mind.
***
1 Investigative journalist Nellie Bly went undercover as a patient in a mental asylum in New York in 1887.
Poet Lindsay Stewart is from Glen Ellen, California. Her work has been featured most recently in Southern Humanities Review, Salt Hill Journal, and Poetry International. Her debut chapbook, house(hold), was published in 2022. More of her work can be found on her website http://lindsaystewart.weebly.com.
Artist JC Alfier’s (they/them) most recent book of poetry, The Shadow Field, was published by Louisiana Literature Press (2020). Journal credits include Faultline, New York Quarterly, Notre Dame Review, Penn Review, River Styx, Southern Poetry Review and Vassar Review. They are also an artist doing collage and double-exposure work after the style of Toshiko Okanoue, Francesca Woodman, and especially Katrien De Blauwer.
Gulf Stream Magazine 