Found: Psychic State

For Lura Beam & Louise Stevens Bryant

A professional woman
twenty-seven years old
is a state of mind.

Three or four years’
preparation for self-
support accepts a discipline
which presents other
than instinctive values.
Choice of a profession
is a choice against marriage
among alternatives.
 This woman
has proven
that she can subdue
impulse, does not have
to marry for economic
reasons, is hesitant, critical.
(Already marriage is not
a certainty, but a question.)

But these are love matches.

The patient is in the highly
specialized emotional state
which frames all love stories:
She believes
in magic and
feeds on the
supernatural.

Source: Poetry (October 2025)