You shatter every stubborn thing,
Key Bearer —
split open the locked ward’s double door,
stride past the psychiatrist’s office.

Your worshipers greet you:
the psychotics, the enthralled.
You have broken them all
with your black dagger, your whip.

Now they see with jagged vision
as the world opens its maws.
What do the mind doctors know
Of the suicide’s joyful intensity?

Goddess of Storms,
your magic invokes their searing lightnings.

[Lorraine Schein  is a New York poet and writer whose work has appeared recently in Strange Horizons, Witches & Pagans, Sagewoman,  and in Alice Redux, an anthology about Alice in Wonderland. Her poetry book, The Futurist’s Mistress, is available from mayapplepress.com.]