Michael Harty is a training and supervising analyst at the Greater Kansas City Psychoanalytic Institute. He has practiced for the last 30 years in Prairie Village, Kansas. With a long-standing interest in psychoanalysis and poetry, he has been expanding his writing horizons through the publication of his work and through taking the New Directions Program of the Washington Psychoanalytic Center In February he appeared as the featured poet on the International Psychoanalysis website. He has been published in the Texas Poetry Calendar and Still Crazy, an over-50 magazine.
Harty trained at the Topeka Institute for Psychoanalysis. He was part of the development of psychoanalysis in his area from the study group stage all the way through to the development of the Greater Kansas City-Topeka Psychoanalytic Center The center contains the Greater Kansas City Psychoanalytic Institute, where he is a TA. He currently serves as president of the center.
The three poems that follow are gripping realities placed within language so well suited to each that they are very striking. There is internal drama to each piece and like a good book leaves you wanting to know more.
Unasked
I should have read you like a poem,should have interrogated the silencesaround your words, found the invitationyou would never speak—to askabout a mother's romancewith illness, the hush around her door;to ask about your nightmareof hotel rooms, why you would runto exhaustion in the dark streetswhile your protector drank himself to sleep.Why no eager schoolmate would knowthe tender down of your thighs. Why you droveto the store for your motherlike the good daughter you were,picked up her prescriptionthen home in your pink bedroomate a handful, and placedyourself beyond all questions.
Countertransference
Sometimes when you speakI hear my first boss, soft like you,stingy with his help.Or my fourth-grade teacherwho had your hair and wantedboys to be like girls.Parents, preachers, coaches, cousins:I search for your voice distinctfrom the chorus of remindersyet after all this timeif you grab my collar and scream,I might think you are embracing me.I may tell you a dozen ignorant liesin pursuit of one truth, and all you can dois try to forgive me, and keep talking.
Do Invisible People Still Have to Breathe?
That's affirmative, no question. I knewa woman invisible for thirty-eight yearsif you count her time growing upplus most of her marriage. She tookmany breaths during that timealthough very quietly.She learned early to time her breathingto coincide with others so shewould not be audible. This matchedher skill at dressing to blendwith the background and findinga shadow to stand in.Her parents would cut four pieces of piewhen there were five at the table.Teachers had to think hardwhen they saw her name on an essayBeggars never asked her for money,dogs never barked when she passed.Throughout that time she was breathingthough concerned she might be usingtoo much air The trouble startedwhen she grew tired of children
Sheri Butler, M.D., is an adult training and consulting analyst and a child consulting analyst in the child division at the Seattle Psychoanalytic Society and Institute. A published poet and member of TAP's editorial board, she welcomes readers' comments, suggestions, and poetry submissions at .