Big Need

by Julie Alden Cullinane

I see the sound of big need on my face
mirrored in the sleek black glass window
Its sicklewings spreading
belt-buckle divot pressed into my forehead
Like the pink half-moons of my thumb flesh
Sis is a furnace
I'm sluicing anguish
Greased up guts
Taste acid and horrible sour
The slightest slight shatters me

 
250 dollars an hour
Three-degree therapist
My words a soupy, half-formed egg yolk
Ashamed of how wet they sound when I speak them
She chews - neutralizes them and spits them back to me 
In slime-soaked beige
Now a signature, not a thumbprint

 
When bad things happen
Before bones and organs are finished
It’s too late, they fossilize
Then pay pay pay for careful extraction
Without nicking an artery
She’s a pixelated glitch in an armchair
A color with no smell

 
The radiator is a kettle that can’t come.
It stirs my blood.
You are terrifying in your happiness
Beautiful and awful
Amongst all these unbearable bodies

 
A chemical hurt bubbles up at once, chokes me.
A sneak of a flame.
I swallow it, scribble yellow pad
I want to vomit out the window and have it boomerang back into my throat
Clean.

 
Your promise was a lid 
I gladly lived under
Breathed through holes in the cardboard
Big eyes examining me
A shrinking violet
A pharaoh once.


Julie Alden Cullinane is a poet, writer, and artist from outside Boston, Massachusetts. She is a recent graduate of the Master of English, Creative Writing program at Bridgewater State University. Her artwork has been featured in Stylus. Her poetry has been published in Plexus, The Boston Globe, and The Graduate Review Volumes VI & VII. She is currently working in academia while pursuing admittance to a Ph.D. program and teaching opportunities. In 2021 she presented a peer-reviewed paper on Irish poet Eavan Boland at the annual MERC New England Regional Conference, this year for MERC 2022 she will present in person a short original graphic novel “When the Hand of the Universe has to Turn You in the Right Direction” that she wrote for one of her graduate classes. Besides writing, she loves being a mom to her two boys and dog and is hoping to someday teach writing at a college level.