Call This Research
When your mother is depressed you will be depressed.
When you are depressed your mother will be depressed.
Your daughter will be depressed because you and your mother
May be or have been depressed. Aunt Tilly
Was depressed. Aunt Candice was electrified. It’s inherited,
Intergenerational. Old minds are housed in living bodies.
There are a few things you can do. Don’t read too many numbers.
Watch the orange-red flames climb bleached stalks
Of smudge sticks while the wind carries
The scent of eucalyptus burning
Wildly
Away.
• • •
Rachel Tramonte’s work has appeared in such magazines as Bluestem Magazine, Common Ground Review, Door is a Jar, Emrys Journal, Glassworks, Hobart, and Whistling Shade. Her poem “Dead Letter Mail” was nominated for the 2018 Sundress Best of the Net award. She received her MA in English and Creative Writing from Binghamton University. She lives and writes in Cleveland, Ohio with her partner and their two daughters.