CLINICALLY SPEAKING

Yvette A. Schnoeker-Shorb

The world is full of depressives

contemplating the easiest way out or

emotionally flatlined on prescriptions

or more seductive self-served drugs.

I feel the pain of their brain rain,

as we walk in our groggy, foggy

storms, quiet and humbly challenging

strangers to give us a reason to live—

make me angry, no, make me rageful;

engage my soul to step away

from the shadows where the mind

is entwined in its chemical design;

how can luminescence be so dark?

I can penetrate you with this cold

radiance. Do you want to read

my stories of inability to feel

joy? Happiness is for suckers. Just

ask any of us whom you thought

you knew, thought was normal

or psychological stable or able

to continue to color the crowds

walking through your life. We are

the ones who suddenly disappeared.

Yvette A. Schnoeker-Shorb’s work has appeared in many publications, including Depth Insights Journal, Watershed Review, Foliate Oak, Conium Review, Twisted Vine Literary Arts Journal, Aji Magazine, Terrain.org: A Journal of the Built and Natural Environments, SLAB: A Literary Magazine, Kudzu House Quarterly, Caesura, the anthology Talking Back and Looking Forward: An Educational Revolution in Poetry and Prose (Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group), and others, with work forthcoming in Weber—The Contemporary West, Green Hills Literary Lantern, and others. In addition to past Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominations, her work received recent Honorable Mentions in 2016 from both Port Yonder Press and Erbacce Press. She has been an educator, a researcher, and an editor, and is co-founder of Native West Press, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit natural history press.