Toward the End

Toward the end, she would drift off
mid-sentence, slipping from one
nearly accessible cloud to a higher
further one. Maybe it was the effect
of 30 pills a day, maybe a turning inward,
away from pain. At that point, though,
I suspect it was a lethargy of the soul,
an apathy arrived at in response to fear
that her sentence, unfinished,
served just as well, with no news
to give the most avid listener and nothing
but her tired old stories to tell.

Susan Berlin lives in Massachusetts. Her poems have been published in The Alaska Quarterly Review, The Asheville Poetry Review, Cincinnati Poetry Review, Harvard Review, and Ploughshares, among many others. Five-time nominee for The Pushcart Prize, she was chosen as finalist for the National Poetry Series in 2001. She was a finalist for the CSU Poetry Center Prize, Akron Poetry Prize, River Styx Poetry Prize, Ploughshares Emerging Writers Contest, and Tupelo Press First Book Award Contest. She was semifinalist and has received numerous honorable mentions from New Millenium Writings and won First Prize in the 16th Annual Galway Kinnell Poetry Contest. Most recently, she was again chosen as finalist for the National Poetry Series 2003. Home