You cannot depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.
- ~Mark Twain
Poems
wake up your saints and settle down for the night
by Sasha Fletcher
I pull a raised platform strung up with lights out of my mouth
without much difficulty and then I stand on the stage and wait
while a crowd gathers. What are you doing they say
and I tell them that I am performing miracles.
I start by placing all their trouble in my mouth
until the world seems brighter
and this brightness is directly related
to the lights on my stage. I receive wild
and unheralded applause. At the edge of town
is a vast encroaching darkness.
Can you swallow that too they say
and I tell them I can swallow that too. Soon after
I retire. I build a house in the country
and read many books on gardening and sunsets.
Everyday I awake at dawn and take my coffee and bask
in my seclusion. There are tulips on the table
but I remain dissatisfied.
I raise up an army of the dead and gather them in the woods.
We prepare to march on the town. My army of the dead
does not ask questions and I like that about them.
We are getting excited. We are practicing our dance routines
and death by defenestration. We are oiling up our guns
and tying together our limbs. Pretty soon
it's a real horror show out here. My army of the dead
takes offense at the term Horror Show. I do not tolerate insubordination
and so I bury them in the ground. After that
I throw sheets over everything in my house.
I tell the townspeople that these are all ghosts.
They ask me what I am planning on doing about thes ghosts.
I tell them nothing.
Gothic Alley Cat Hector VeronikaLozovaya
I said What and she said Cheating:
by Sasha Fletcher
let us hold hands as we walk through the fire
……….We were in the kitchen making dinner
when she asked me if I was cheating on her.
I said What and she said Cheating
and I turned the knife around so I could wash it better
and I said Yeah no I got that part
I meant What are you talking about
Why would you say that
and she said That wasn't really an answer was it and I said
No? and she said Really? and I said Here and handed her
a dish to dry and I said to her Well if by cheating
you mean have I been having sex with other people
while living with you in a committed monogamous relationship,
then yes, I have been cheating and she said Fuck you.
……….We were in the kitchen and dinner was cooking and she said
What if I told you I'd been sleeping around,
like a lot, like whenever I was at work I just spread my legs
to anyone who would glance at them and I said
You mean those legs there that I think of fondly
and she said Yes these
and brandished them in front of me
like some sort of weapon.
……….We were in the kitchen and dinner was still cooking
and she said Is dinner ready yet
and I said It is not and by the way I said
I am fucking someone else and she is pregnant
and I am thinking of asking her to live with us
like a member of the family
and then I got stabbed in the neck.
……….We were in the kitchen and dinner was still cooking
and she said Is dinner ready yet
and I said No I said You just asked me that.
……….I said to her The thing of it is
I have been all around several other women during our time together.
I have told them tender things,
full of feelings and also promises. I have told them
I will always love them
and that what they have done for me
is a unique and beautiful thing. I have told them
you have never loved me like they have loved me
and I have never loved you like I love them
and then they put their lips around me
and I sigh.
……….She said If I told you I loved you I'd probably
have been lying at one point. These days she said
I'd call you a brick tied to my neck
or a prison sentence in the tundra maybe
but that just doesn't seem like enough.
……….I told her to dream bigger. I said
Like a building. I said imagine me
as an enormous screaming building
full of endless need and want and screaming
all the time about wanting to have sex with you
especially when you are just trying to have a conversation
regarding dinner, or checking if the laundry got done.
……….A building she said Is not bigger than the tundra.
……….Just once she said
I would like to have an actual conversation.
……….We were in the kitchen
putting dinner on the table
and the freeway was experiencing
some sort of holy moment and the lights
on the cars held perfectly still
and they stayed like that forever.
Poly NerySoul
after all is said and done
by Sasha Fletcher
I got drunk. I fell down. I shut the door.
I tried to stand. There was a knock.
I said that I was not receiving. I told myself
that I was not receiving and I shut my eyes
and waited for it all to stop. I pulled myself
together. I peeked through the window
and turned back around. I made my way out the back
down into a lonesome valley.
I thought about how if I was a bird if I was a saint
if I was the kind of person who really felt alive
I would make my way to a lonesome valley and I would settle down.
I would build myself a porch around a fire.
Over the fire I would build a house. I would build a house
with no doors. The whole world would pass through.
I would lay awake at night dreaming of another life
where I had many children and every one of them
was armed to the teeth and ready to defend
everything they ever loved
until there was nothing left of any of us.
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Silence-rustle-noise Marmy