#odes to lithium

[haveyoureadthisbook-poll]

Have you read Odes to Lithium by Shira Erlichman (2019)?

yes

no

I've read parts of it

I've never heard of it

Voting ended onMay 13

[readtilyoudie]

You are a poet and sometimes it helps you and sometimes it distances you from others.

Odes to Lithium by Shira Erlichman

[soliel-et-lune]

from ‘Odes to Lithium’ by Shira Erlichman

[devilsskettle]

Side Effects from Odes to Lithium by Shira Elrichman 

[literarymedicine]

— Shira Erlichman, from “Perfect”, Odes to Lithium

[smokefalls]

It's not easy dying / without dying.

Shira Erlichman, “Postscript to Mania” from Odes to Lithium

[bostonpoetryslam]

I tried. But mind over matter is a joke. The mind is matter. Someone’s unprofessional opinion was to 'relax' over matter. To sandcastle over wave. They aimed to clean up a murder scene from behind a plate of glass. It was my murder. Mine. As if I could possess the firegrief that possessed me. Wrestle the wind to the floor for daring enter my house. But it’s just me down there, gripping my shoulders, threatening my own heart. Have you ever seen the dark split into two peaches? Sickness is a lot like that. To the uninitiated it looks like fruit. Wise, shiny, certifiably cherry. Do you mind if I die while I say it? Rot that my teeth met: my fault. Would it matter if I tried while I died? Will you relax the coffin into the soil? If you don’t have blood on your hands by the end of this you weren’t listening.

Shira Erlichman, “Mind Over Matter,” from Odes to Lithium

[lifeinpoetry]

Four days is a long time in a mental hospital. How do you even fill one day in a mental hospital? Where do you go? Who do you talk to? When the pay phone rang and some sleepy body shouted for me, I asked if it was my parents, and if it was, I wouldn’t answer. The one time I did answer, my mother spoke like a garden hose full of holes, spouting everywhere, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, it should have been different.” And the sad thing is, the garden hose was trying, it was actually elegant in its miserable mess, it was trying. But the thing about “I’m sorry” when you’re hearing it from a phone booth in a neon hallway of a mental hospital, is that it doesn’t really mow your lawn, it doesn’t really cut your steak, you know?

— Shira Erlichman, from “Portrait of a Release,” Odes to Lithium