Take Two (Ariana Moulton)

For Anne Sexton, who was prescribed poetry

Take two, and call me in the morning.  
5 mg of metaphor and 1200 of iambic pentameter.
Take with food, write each accelerated heart beat  
into a rhythm that counts countless capsules.

Take two children, combine noble thoughts,  
an unquiet mind, a political playscape
escaping the country’s grasp,
childproof the lid and call it confessional poetry. 

Storytellers veil the story until it’s written,
you wrote in ‘59, but at 45, your last chapter  
punctuated by your own hand, you feared
you were closer to creativity spiraling,  
draining the already drained. 

What would you say to your daughters
who dutifully downed the spoonful,  
without question, without their mother?
The early spokeswoman for poetry prescribed. 

Children of ice,
praying to the morbidly still,
your words dosed high enough, 
to deliver you to the crying moon.

*Feature image: ‘softgel’ by Elsa Olofsson


Ariana Moulton is a 3rd grade teacher and poet living in Chicago with her two daughters, husband and puppy. She grew up in Cornwall, Vermont. She attended Bates College and has her master’s from Columbia College Chicago. She is inspired by nature, politics, Chicago, Vermont, and has been mentored by her father, poet Gary Margolis. Her writing has been seen in Poet’s Choice, Lucky Jefferson, Poem Village, What Rough Beast Covid 19 Edition and her first manuscript ‘Trace the Curve’ will be published with Atmosphere Press. Ariana has found the pandemic to be a source of will and creativity.