KORSAKOFF’S | Willa Schneberg
Before, I retained what the tiny boxes on forms
were for and why to x or ü, the necessity
of seconding a motion, the title
of any book I inhabited, and big words
I relish didn’t vanish.
Before, I bossed people, wrote checks
and underlined 00’s with 100 below,
frequented the drag queen dive with Elliot
until the bachelorettes took over,
and felt Lia could teach me how to love,
but she called my therapist and told her
I was drinking again. Then I couldn’t stop
and Pebbles shit everywhere, and somehow
the stink didn’t bother me, nor
the heaps of crumpled beer cans.
Now, I wish I could forget my father
who staggered and fell so often
he wound up in a wheelchair.
At the end, my mother kept him buzzed
on the hour—a droplet of whiskey
on his tongue.
Now, there is nothing new to learn
to remember anyway, living is assisted,
and my only addiction is Frappuccino.
I waddle – my body a gigantic rotting pear.
I sit at the same table which isn’t mine
with the same people. My bed is made not by me,
soft capsules are dispensed. I down
a handful of green ones and blue ones.
Each once had a name.
Willa Schneberg is a poet, ceramic sculptor and curator. "The Naked Room," her latest, (2023) and sixth poetry collection, is a true synthesis of her life as a Licensed Clinical Social Worker in private practice, and as a poet. Among her honors: the Oregon Book Award in Poetry, the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund Award, Second Place in the Allen Ginsberg Poetry Awards, residencies at Yaddo, MacDowell, Kathmandu, Nepal and Glasgow, Scotland, and poems on the Writer’s Almanac. Her poetry has been translated into Hebrew, Arabic, Nepali and Korean. She presented the online workshop “Developing Empathy Through Writing the Persona Poem” for the NW Narrative Medicine Community of Practice. This year, a poem in The Poeming Pigeon has been nominated for a Pushcart.