Poems from Freud Blah Blah Blah
When you take apart the small thing there is
always a perfect, blue egg on the inside.
Once I found one on the ground unbroken
and took it home to hatch. Little incubator,
little devil swathed in a child’s chest.
___________________________________________________
Pets are stupid. I’ve never understood why
we want to clean up another animal’s shit.
We already live inside of one that constantly
needs to be fed and cleaned and put down
for naps in the dark. My hand likes to be held.
I keep telling you.
___________________________________________________
I want to drop a tiny white feather into you.
I want to discover at the last second that
I’m a witch doctor and pull disease out
like a wishbone. Waiting rooms are instructive.
But not that instructive.
___________________________________________________
Suffering is having your body full of nails.
Just replace your blood with nails and see what I mean.
What a mirror. What a black lake full of stars.
___________________________________________________
My mother dreamt she gave birth to a wolf,
but I came out instead. My family talks about this
like it’s a joke. Somewhere in the mountains a howl
is gathering. Somewhere guts spill across the snow
like hot snakes–I try to explain over and over that
the pattern is remarkable for its beauty but they don’t listen.
Stop signing your name every fucking place, they say,
and really mean it this time.
___________________________________________________
Your purple t-shirt should have a horse on it–
your chest would be under the horse’s chest.
___________________________________________________
Can I live vicariously through your ekphrasis?
Art is an arm but a shitty hugger. Its shadow can be
pinned down and put on a wall. Paris wants you
to like it better than London–they are both full
of graves. Vestigial marble bodies people buildings
the size of stadiums and you are lost inside.
___________________________________________________
SARAH BARTLETT lives in Portland, OR. She is the co-author of two chapbook collaborations: Baby On The Safe Side (Publishing Genius in 2011) and A Mule-Shaped Cloud (horse less press 2008). Her recent work has appeared in: NOÖ, inter|rupture, Jellyfish, Filter, New Delta Review, Burnside Review, Raleigh Quarterly, Sixth Finch, and elsewhere.