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CW: Depictions of electroconvulsive therapy
Thoughts at El Matador
There are so many alternative lives.
I watch the eroding cliffs at El Matador,
a gull swoops too closely.
What have I become?
Have I become anything?
Why do I feel the need to have such identity
or to rebel from identities?
O, I am twinned to my oblivion
— “God’s remembrance”
What shocks have shook me:
Lucio Bini’s electricity
Courses through the foil of my being
My anesthetized seizings
Erasing the mind’s slate
The nurse swabs my head, sticks
Electrodes on my skull
The heart monitor’s cantabile
As I close my eyes
The anesthetist injects my moly
To vouchsafe my travels
In the underworld
I never wake
ECT
DYLAN WILLOUGHBY is a permanently disabled LGBTQIA+ poet, composer, music producer, video producer, and photographer, born in London, England and currently living in Long Beach, CA. Chester Creek Press has published 3 of his limited-edition letterpress poetry chapbooks with illustrations by the hyper-realist painter Anthony Mastromatteo. He has received residency fellowships from Yaddo and MacDowell and earned an MFA from Cornell University, where he studied with A. R. Ammons and Robert Morgan. His poems have appeared widely in literary magazines including Agenda (UK), Stand (UK), The Interpreter's House (UK), Shenandoah, Salmagundi, Denver Quarterly, CutBank, Southern Humanities Review, and Green Mountains Review.
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