Anxiety Aubade
          I am waiting for the Age of Anxiety to drop dead.
          —Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Anxiety went gentle into that good dawn with its white fingers and dumb mouth, pendulum of panic, cap of migraine, dark cape of fear. It free-floated out the false window, sweated and shivered through the unhinged door. It had stayed too long like a meddling mother-in-law, but now Anxiety has gotten the hell out of Dodge and dodged its way out of Hell. It was sucked under a house in Kansas, leaving upturned feet in black-striped stockings and ruby slippers. Anxiety has boarded the plane with its Xanax and shoebomb, its straitjacket, its flask full of angry cortisol. Anxiety has succumbed to biofeedback, asanas, hot baths, long walks, Baptist prayer, and chamomile tea. Anxiety has hyperventilated its last labored breath. Anxiety has gone to that great cuckoo’s nest in the sky, and now what will I do with this strange cauldron of calm?


                           Cindy Hochman