Tinnitus
by Andrea Fry
Don’t think how it resembles madness,
din of peepers, chimes or tuning fork.
Denial of the obvious takes practice.
Once a trivial noise that’s upped its status,
the only scheme for taming is to deflect.
Don’t think how it resembles madness.
Not death, but it’s a sentence, nonetheless--
an arranged marriage to negotiate.
Denial of the obvious takes practice.
Your mindset toggles between sunniness
and disbelief this devil child is yours to take.
Don’t think how it resembles madness.
So, you concede--it’s selective deafness
that’s required, an end-around to outwit wits.
Won’t happen overnight, it takes practice.
Cognitive-based lobotomy (CBL) has its place
when a teetering sanity’s at stake.
Don’t think how it resembles madness,
it’s just self-bamboozling. You’ve had practice.
din of peepers, chimes or tuning fork.
Denial of the obvious takes practice.
Once a trivial noise that’s upped its status,
the only scheme for taming is to deflect.
Don’t think how it resembles madness.
Not death, but it’s a sentence, nonetheless--
an arranged marriage to negotiate.
Denial of the obvious takes practice.
Your mindset toggles between sunniness
and disbelief this devil child is yours to take.
Don’t think how it resembles madness.
So, you concede--it’s selective deafness
that’s required, an end-around to outwit wits.
Won’t happen overnight, it takes practice.
Cognitive-based lobotomy (CBL) has its place
when a teetering sanity’s at stake.
Don’t think how it resembles madness,
it’s just self-bamboozling. You’ve had practice.
Andrea Fry has published two collections of poetry: The Bottle Diggers (Turning Point Press, 2017) and Poisons & Antidotes (Deerbrook Editions, 2021). Her poems have appeared or will appear in Alaska Quarterly Review, Annals of Internal Medicine, Barrow Street, Cimarron Review, Spoon River Poetry Review, The Sun and Women’s Review of Books, among others. She was nominated three times for the Pushcart Prize. She is a newly retired oncology nurse practitioner and lives in Brookline, Massachusetts.