by E Kristin Anderson
I can’t wake up here—
the hospital
my room
a great dark
trying to bring me back.
All of it a long string of
the most
frightening
little needle —
follow it in.
I don’t belong here
hooked to machines
at this hour of the night—
eleven o’clock
eleven-thirty.
Make it easier—
play that record.
I know that sound.
Found Poem Source Material: Rice, Anne. “Chapter 24.” Lasher, Mass Market ed., Ballantine, 1995, pp. 429-433.
E. Kristin Anderson is a poet, Prince fan, Starbucks connoisseur, and glitter enthusiast living in Austin, Texas. She is the co-editor of Dear Teen Me and her next anthology, Hysteria: Writing the female body, is forthcoming from Sable Books. She is currently working on Come as You Are, an anthology of writing on 90s pop culture with Anomalous Press. Kristin is the author of eight chapbooks of poetry including A Guide for the Practical Abductee (Red Bird Chapbooks), Pray, Pray, Pray: Poems I wrote to Prince in the middle of the night (Porkbelly Press), Fire in the Sky (Grey Book Press), We’re Doing Witchcraft (Hermeneutic Chaos Press), and 17 seventeen XVII (Grey Book Press). Kristin is an editor at Red Paint Hill and was formerly a poetry editor at Found Poetry Review. Once upon a time she worked at The New Yorker. Find her online at EKristinAnderson.com and on twitter at @ek_anderson.