NEW YORK STATE 

On weekends we sit in the Rec Room

Halting the inevitable.  With invisible string and

 

Boxes, endless

Collages, and, What, 

By the way,

Did you think you would do 

With your life?  Glue

Tiny red, blue, green, and yellow glass beads 

And ivory shells to stripped wood boxes.

At the picnic table in the main room, 

We sit with the boys

Who want to die. 

Diorama of gorgeous retards, child-

Lock scissors in my shaking hands.

 

This poem from Cynthia Cruz’s The Glimmering Room, Four Way Books, exemplifies Cruz's search for normalcy in an abnormal world.  The beads are small and fragile not unlike her and the other girls and boys who exist in her world… a world of retards… in art therapy.