Medicine Poet Jodie Toohey

Hello all. Today, a poem from Jodie Toohey. Jodie is the author of two poetry collections, Crush and Other Love Poems for Girls (2008), and The Other Side of Crazy (918studio, 2013), which contains “Out of the Blue," first place winner of Bettendorf Public Library’s Love Poem Contest in 2012. Her novel, Missing Emily: Croatian Life Letters, was published in 2012 and she has two entries in Midwest Writing Center’s Creative Writing Primer.  Thank you Jodie!

NO END

So there will not be an end

To the story,

I will write my life,

The days, the hours,

The moments of awakeness,

Drip-dried and drunk,

Rain plastered hair

Beneath LED lighted billboards,

Free and unfaltering.

I’ll take it all,

The tears, the joy,

Unnecessary lies crept over

And pulled under

In purgatory slumber,

Let it wash over,

Clean and captivating.

I will write it all,

The dreams, forgotten scenes,

Saved and unsacrificed

Until the last day

My pen struggles and withers,

Evaporates off the page

So I will not be lost,

But forever there,

The last word.