praying mantis: consider your eyes,
wrong axes, sinking towards different
symphonies: consider, please: mouth: part me
°
dream of ten thousand guinea pigs
peeking heads through the waves’ troughs
such softness such wet
°
That night was like floating but
in reverse
thinking of you between
icicles and monkey bars
each lip bringing the neon-blue
lacework of wings
towards the pressed butterfly of this
elite vacation.
I pour resin over the pirated moment.
I return it to sender,
make a paperweight. There.
There. Perfect.
I (seeping with preclusive love) shall give this creature to
the Cairenes air in which you live,
before we wake to re-fall out of touch,
yes, and yes. O whatever else?
WASHING AT THE END OF THE NIGHT, WHICH IS THE NEXT DAY’S AFTERNOON
A foot, my own, can be either
collaborator or accessory to a cause,
especially when looming its sole across the surface of a bath to gauge the heat.
A woman’s foot, when shed from fishnet tights, is a free fish;
a small gesticulator, circling toes to ripple. This is foreplay to the end of progress... Hush now; it is entering the whirlpool,
which sucks us to a refracted world.
Entering a garden, where the air writes it all down;
Nymphs, washing; sororal twins to stiff Greek columns. Gowns as melting candles.
Exhausting to find the universal in this caper.
Psychic hygiene in a restored Venetian arch.
Temperature is perfect. Water, perfect. I am empty. I have killed my mother in myself.
Sarah FLETCHER is an American-British writer who is currently researching a PhD on pain and expression in Aberystwyth. Her work has been published in The Poetry Review, Poetry London, The White Review,The Rialto and more. Her fourth pamphlet, CAVIAR, is upcoming with Out-Spoken Press.
Partner to a press called Tenement, Hotel is a publications series for new approaches to fiction, non fiction & poetry & features work from established & emerging talent. Hotel provides the space for experimental reflection on literature’s status as art & cultural mediator.