Dispatch from the Psych Ward: 02

I am preparing for the limits

of my wound—
29 and not yet properly diagnosed

I thumb open sutures
throw stones at myself like a song

the water of my body rippling.
I once swallowed a gas lamp

after the psychiatrist told me
there were too many things wrong

with my body—
but he couldn’t see where

couldn’t see which
body.

the lamp turned into wolf eyes
furnace ash

I appeared as an absence

in his hands.

Michelle Moncayo is a Dominican/Ecuadorian poet in New Jersey. She received a 2020 Fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. Michelle is also a recipient of fellowships from SPACE at Ryder Farm, Vermont Studio Center, Sundress Academy for the Arts, CantoMundo, and VONA. Her poetry has appeared in No Tender Fences: An Anthology of Immigrant & First-Generation American Poetry, Palette Poetry, Ninth Letter, & Winter Tangerine Review.