Studying a Note to Self

by Hannah Green

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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.


Out of Line cover image

This piece was published in ‘Out of Line,’ the Fall 2015 issue of CV2.

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