Intake Room B

Sean McQuinney

On arriving at the psych/detox ward

Halved with a lump

at high-spine

the “couch”


is the plastic

of children’s playpens.


Time’s gone hippity-hoppity,

and my shoes are gone,

so I’m rubbing my toes

on my calves to keep them warm.

It’s a game.

I’ll stop.

They’ll go cobalt,

and the ache will build

on itself—

shells to sand to limestone.

Sean McQuinney earned his MFA in Poetry from the University of Florida studying under Ange Mlinko, Michael Hofmann, and William Logan. He lives in Gainesville, Florida with his partner and their two cats and has publications in Saw Palm, South 85, Frontier Poetry, and Prometheus Rising.

-11-