“Asemic hydrid” © Keith Nunes

 

hallway

a man screams in cerulean
johnnies—he sees an umbered

woman, but she is not there.

                                     normally,

the man is quiet (a baby with a binky),
but today his mind swells.

through the meshed window, an army
of clouds march

forward in nimbled
fashion—

it is my last day here.

                      stuck in my
titanium-white
ten-by-ten wardroom for

the rest of the day, i
ponder last night—

three deafening knocks on
my door.

             these knocks
came from knuckles

of
the
        inhuman—

splitting from my bed
i creep my door ajar. i shake.
nothing crosses the hallway.

my room becomes
my safety net—

i see Amanda walking
her laps. she told me

earlier that there are many
spirits on this floor.

again i hear him—
the man and his screams,
nursed, yet again, to suspension—

what else is there to
do, but sedate him?

i’d like to hear a
better solution,

if there ever
was one
                  here.

they do,
and the
screams
now stop.

there is peace.
and so—

i promptly drift within
benadryl undreams—

the kind where blacks
play with shapes you

cannot see, unsee,
do or undo. next is

buzzing white, and then
                        —yawning.

 

Patrick Thomas graduated from The New School’s Eugene Lang College with a degree in poetry. In 2018 he was diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder and have been working on poetry and prose while healing from a recent episode.

Keith Nunes (New Zealand) was nominated for*Best Small Fictions 2019, the Pushcart Prize and has won the Flash Frontier Short Fiction Award. He’s had poetry, haiku, short fiction, asemic writing and visuals published around the globe.