CYNTHIA ATKINS (she, her), originally from Chicago, Illinois, is the author of Psyche’s Weathers, In the Event of Full Disclosure, Still-Life With God, and Duets, a collaborative chapbook from Harbor Editions. Her work has appeared in many journals, including Alaska Quarterly Review, BOMB, Cider Press Review, Diode, Cimarron Review, Indianapolis Review, Florida Review, Los Angeles Review, North American Review, Permafrost, Plume, Michigan City Review, and Verse Daily. Her new book, “The Honeymoon of Sorrows” will be forthcoming from The Poetry Lighthouse in 2027. She earned her MFA from Columbia University. Atkins has been nominated for the Best of The Net, and earned fellowships and prizes from Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, SWWIM Residency @TheBetsyHotel Writer’s Room, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, The Writer’s Voice, and Writers@Work. Atkins lives on the Maury River of Rockbridge County, VA. Find her at www.cynthiaatkins.com.
Ode to Serotonin by Cynthia Atkins
You’re the drooping wallflower
finally asked to the dance. The taffeta
dress slides across a floor of metaphor—
As in that shining surface of feeling.
As in the blues got left at the bus stop.
Spry, how the afternoon light lands
on a vase of flowers. A-glow, as in
someone sliding a magic carpet into the DMs
of memory, where your first grade librarian
smelled like lilacs and read you to sleep.
You duked it out with the palooka
blackmailing humans with a shady
scam of sadness. A howling wolf
licking its wounds. Sweet spot,
your mom’s cheese sandwich packed
in the Charlie Brown lunch box—
his one hair standing on end
like the first tulip in spring.
