from: Seize
i.
I fear my poor old soul may be a fixer
upper. I strive to find out – it’s that
forensic streak I have, I suppose – by
too often drinking on an empty stomach.
There’s a view afoot, I think, that a proper
soul needs proper seasoning. Not the terse
latency of an untrammelled youth, casually
hopeful, a quietly relieved recognition of
having skirted traumatic symptoms of a more
reasonably catch-as-catch-can Freudian temper.
My therapist now suggests meeting every other
week. We’ve become nearly telepathic, anyway.
The Greenland shark, lentissimo across
human generations, is, I think, a cartilaginous
fish of a more melancholy disposition. I think
it knows itself its own tragic monomyth.
Chris Cusack is a writer and academic based in the Netherlands. Recent work has appeared in Poetry London, Poetry Ireland Review, Abridged, The Manchester Review, The Honest Ulsterman, and elsewhere. Find him on Twitter: @FearfulJoycuit.