Zak Mucha, LCSW, is a psychoanalyst in private practice and president of the-Chicago Center for Psychoanalysis. He spent seven years working as the-supervisor of an Assertive Community Treatment (ACT) program, providing-24/7 services to persons suffering from severe psychosis, substance abuse-issues, and homelessness. Mucha additionally worked as a counselor and-consultant for U.S. combat veterans undergoing training for digital forensic-investigations in child pornography. Before going into the clinical field, Mucha worked as a freelance journalist,-truck driver, furniture mover, construction worker, union organizer, staff-member at a juvenile DCFS locked unit, and taught briefly at a women’s-prison. He is the author of Emotional Abuse: A Manual for Self-Defense as well as a-collection of poetry, Shadow Box (Albireo MKG, 2019), a novel, The-Heavyweight Champion of Nothing (Dockyard Press, 2021), an-autobiography, Swimming to the Horizon: Crack, Psychosis, and-Street-Corner Social Work (Koehler, 2024), and as second collection of-poetry, The Ambulatorium (Pay What it Costs Publishing, 2024).
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Another Mysterium Tremendum
The can marked “tea” holds salt, tea bags are in the one
for “sugar”, and a third for coffee is emptyAn unseen pattern emerges and fades like a
kitchen rearranged by the Zodiac Killer,an ontological categorization
of inanimate objects. The sacred tree ofa flyspeck village on the counter links heaven
and hell, holding a point of the numina toshift the profane landscape. I cannot find my cup
A ghost hides the spoons. The coffee pot weeps likean icon, and we are grateful we cannot know
each other outside the sliver of space our thoughts share.