Studying a Note to Self
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There is a wound and when no one is looking
I lick it. Salt can be metaphor.
I will make your steak taste better?
i.e. I am seasoned flesh.
Elements have been left burning. I can smell
the smoke and I fear for the cat. Pretty pretty whiskers.
This is a lesion (the word serrated knocks my knees)
or a sore I won’t name because I like to think
it won’t stay around for long, though I’m considering
Lucy, Jen, or Joy. I have inquired about vaccinations
and studied the cold anatomy of the needle. I have driven
two miles past the sort of place people go to die. Results?
I am not who I thought I was. There is new evidence:
My little black dress is hung in the back
of the closet with nights I will not speak of.
I would like to say I burned the sheets
but I threw them in the dumpster.
There is a knife in my kitchen and it saws
through Wonder Bread quite marvelously
(I am afraid I will cut off all my hair).
I am searching for peers to review my findings.
A pot is boiling over, I am muscled from constant
stirring. I can’t sweep anything else beneath the rug, the fridge
is full of rot, and where am I supposed to keep my secrets?
Published online November 04 2015.
Hannah Green lives and writes in a small apartment. She is studying English at the University of Winnipeg. Her poetry has appeared in Juice, filling Station, Poetry Lives Here and in the New Winnipeg Poets Folio on Lemon Hound. She does not have a cat.
This piece was published in ‘Out of Line,’ the Fall 2015 issue of CV2.
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