Poem Renaissance – Bethany Tap

Gyroscope Review is celebrating National Poetry Month with a Poem Renaissance, a review of previously published poems looking for new life and new views. Every day through May 20^th, a new poem to fall in love with all over again.

The Good Night
by Bethany Tap

It is the whir of thoughts like old-time ticker tape, a receipt spooling out, looking out the car window at the blur of trees and grass and sky and green. It is counting backwards from 1,000 and losing my place around 850 or so. Back up. Start again. It is the automatic recitation of the Lord’s Prayer, although I gave up belief a decade ago, it still lives there, in the synapses of my mind, Our father who art in heaven—but did you remember to move the laundry to the dryer?—hallowed be thy name. It is the hitch in my son’s breathing as he sleeps beside me and my own stopping for a slow-count, one-one-thousand, two-one-thousand, three—breathe. It is a Benadryl popped around 1:00 a.m. and my internal imitation of my mother’s voice chiding your grandmother took a Benadryl every night to sleep and that’s why she got Alzheimer’s and now I can’t stop thinking about my once-grandmother’s claw hands and hawk-face, cheeks gnawed to nothing, no longer her clever or vibrant self for years before the end of it all, thy kingdom come, thy will be done. Count back: 999, 998, 997 bottles of beer on the wall, back to the beginning, when I was the child in the bed, plagued with an inheritance of night terrors, now insomnia and next, with or without the Benadryl, I know what waits for me at the end, a slow slipping away of everything I am on earth as it is in heaven. Breathe, breathe. Amen.

Originally published in BULLSHIT LIT's third anthology

Bethany Tap is a queer writer who received her MFA from the University of North Carolina-Wilmington. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Litmosphere, Fahmidan Journal, and The MacGuffin, among others. Her debut novel, Upon the Burning, is forthcoming in 2025 with Midnight Meadow Publishing. She currently lives in Grand Rapids, Michigan with her wife and four kids. More of her work can be found at www.bethanytap.com

Don’t forget to read the Spring 2025 Issue, available now, online and in print

Previous Renaissance Poets

April Poets