M.A.Istvan Jr

Eventually he dreamed of his mother’s suicide. She rose up to him like a brook trout, Nosed the surface of his consciousness Before falling back and drifting downstream. He followed her, thinking himself a rainbow after a rain. Then she flowed into a drainage ditch And plunged down deeper Than he could see or hear. His last thought Was of her rising like a great swan on fire, Speeding into the sunset, Calling back to him “it’s all true, it’s all true. ”

Edward Bynum is a practicing psychologist in Massachusetts with several book publications in psychology and poetry . This is a poem about a doctor in session, listening to his own inner thoughts as his patients speak. He is married and the father of 2 adult sons and a practitioner of yoga.

STEM Students and Moby Dick

M.A.Istvan Jr.

Just as vaccines, wherein dwell frail forms of the disease, train immune systems to face the full-bodied thing, literary experiences, wherein we grow invested in diverse fates, train empathy systems to hold in mind that there is a what-it-is-like-to-be the other.

M. A. Istvan Jr., poet and philosopher, teaches at Austin Community College and is the current editor of Safe Space Press. Visit pw.org/directory/writers/m_a_istvan_jr_phd