Jan Castro

Self Portrait in Intensive Care

My body collapsed last Thursday.
In Room 1 in ICU, wired up in bed,
can’t see the view (body doesn’t obey).

My new heart device went viral.
I won’t assign health care proxy
to give control to Claire.
It’s been a week-long spiral.

The device is out, but I’m still 
immobile. My friends comfort and
irritate me; I don’t feel much better
or have much will; I feel like a bag
of quicksand with a brain full of pigswill.

Self-Portrait of my Shadow in the Kitchen Window

The self part is hidden not in the body’s shadow
but in the soul’s shadow. I lift it off the page
and both arm and disarm
all it contains. Past the “use by” date? 
Where are you, soulmate?  
As life spiraled through windows of time, 
did my heart connections fill
my quota – or expire? The sun
warms my bare back and beams,
“be grateful,” and I am. 

My self inside my soul’s shadow
reminds me of those times 
when one of us walked away.

Jan Garden Castro’s books include The Last Frontier (poems, Eclectic Press), The Art & Life of Georgia O’Keeffe, Sonia Delaunay: La Moderne. Poems in New Letters, Exquisite Corps, Roof, Chronogram, Black Renaissance Noire, Konch. She writes for ABR & Sculpture, and holds awards as editor of the River Styx Magazine. She has also been awarded the NEH & Camargo Fellowships. www.jancastro.com/