The Pressure of Love
Electrode laden, head bound
with elastic and needles of gel; a moment
of security and peace— machines
running warm, energy’s lulling
sound, fluorescent
light and fluorescent walls: a lover
in a lab coat clears
her throat
and fidgets with cords.
A lover’s soles
scoff
against linoleum, the laden brain
excites the coated lover
whose foreplay
is an intricate setting
up of connections, plugging
the brain up
to machines
after rubbing skins: some call the act
of abrasion the beginning
of a sacred conception.
Both the heating
and the cooling
of body and brain, lover and machine
fall into a space
between
pleasure
and pain. The child
of connectivity appears on a plot
of wave
forms that turn
the lover into a parent
of interpretation
long after
the brain detaches from the clamps
of its lover. The pressure
that allows the brain’s suspension
of itself, if left
for too long (the pressure of love,
if not released,
at times) becomes
an unbearable numbness.
– by Jessica McFadden
Copyright© 2012 by Jessica McFadden. All Rights Reserved.
Jessica Mason McFadden is a stay-at-home mother and writer living in Western Illinois with her wife and daughters. She lives in a small town, surrounded by cornfields. She misses her hometown of Western New York, yet the witch-muse in her mind was erected from the very stalks from which she flees. Her work has appeared in Women’s Voices Journal, Read These Lips, Diverse Voices Quarterly, Breadcrumb Scabs, Sinister Wisdom and Saltwater Quarterly.
