Creationism

Creationism

So god created you
a man with skin and smiles
sharp angular curves of the body
that round over mine and smooth
my resistance until I cave.
Yes, cave – sweetly and deep
like a bear denning up for winter
full of fat and heavy with sedation
ready to bear children and roll back
into deep slumber.

God created you
a man with music for teeth, your torso a cello
quiet bells hung from the waist
swinging and chiming the chorus of your song.
You sing a siren lullaby knowing this wine
and water will lull me into your cavernous words
ambrosial and dripping with naivety.
I perch - a seasoned flower arching back
parading persuading the bee that comes
late in the autumn to suck the residual nectar
fragmented, crystalline, mine.

God created you
a man incensed with the perfume of domes
and springs, glaciers and history, bracken fern.
An encyclopedia of scents, of odors
you asphyxiate me.
Entwined in this tincture I struggle
against fiber scratching the skin,
tearing the petals and fur from my body
gulp the suffocating fragrance
and succumb, like a tethered wolf
surrendering, muzzled, domesticated.

God created you
a man speaking poetry with your eyes
a blue, so blue…
dark like reservoirs at bases of mountains
clear like shallow water merging into depths
blue like mountain lupine blooming in meadows
blue like sultry jazz licked from a saxophone.
As portals, my eyes flicker, reserved
resigning, retreating, neglecting your gaze.

So god created you
a man candied in humor
sweet on the tongue and bitter in regurgitation
like a barn owl’s appetite, round oblong compact.
We are an entrée of soured limes, peppered with salt
tasting and retasting small pebbles against the tongue
I sit, I sway, I come.
I am your ocean and you, the moon
pulling churning rounding over rocks
licking and smoothing down my resistance
until I cave.
- Sarah Wagstaff

When Sorry Doesn't Cut It

When Sorry Doesn't Cut It

I laugh trying to go on as if nothing
I did was wrong
and nothing I said was hurtful
and no one I knew would care.
Then at nights when I am alone
my room is cold with the shadow
of you lingering from days
where light reflected onto my cheeks.
I close my eyes to ignore and expunge
the guilt sprouting like dandelions,
beautiful and infectious.

“All the world's a stage.”
and I the sole remaining actor
weeping to myself at the side curtain
wipe remorse like snot
onto the backs of my hands
run them down my thigh streaking
self pity and self loathing to dry
like snails moving across rocks.

I pull a hoodie over my head and leave
the thick fabric to shroud my irritated eyes
from the stove light and deafening cacophony
crescendoing in a houseful of silent screams.
My neck drops in apathetic indifference
onto my folded arms, hair tethering skull
to shoulders with overgrown vines and bobby pins.

I laugh, I cry, I sleep, I clean, I cry, I vomit, I cry.
It's times like these I think love must surely existI just forgot to make a reservation.
- Sarah Wagstaff

Stranger Love

Stranger Love

I am sorry to have loved you
and dismissed
your hand on my thigh
your nose brushing my shoulder and breast.
I'm sorry to have loved you
and forgotten
your touch, your skin, and your smell.
I'm sorry to have kissed you
and not meant it one thousand times.
I'm sorry to have fucked you
thinking you were my first and my last.
I'm sorry to have held you in my bed
warming and rewarming our bodies against the other
in new sheets, green sheets, satin and torn sheets.
I'm sorry to have thought marriage
would bring stability,
a house, a home, safety, and surety.I'm sorry to have severed my arms
to rid myself of feeling
your body, our remorse, my pain.
I'm sorry to have loved someone else
and kissed him, and fucked him, and held him.
I am sorry that I liked it.
I am sorry to have cried
for things I can no longer remember.
I am sorry I cannot remember.
I am sorry I thought it was OK
to remember.
I am sorry.
- Sarah Wagstaff

How Frugal is the Chariot

How Frugal is the Chariot

“The pelican of your mind dives into the ocean of these words
and pulls out the fish of meaning.
feel it writhing down your throat,
feel it squirming in your brain
seal it, wax it in the rain
and with a fox.
I do like green eggs and ham.” - Jeff Knight, practical genius on all accounts

initial nascence
arcana sun
cloud language
winged thought flit and fly
congeries boxed in sky lavender
posters of stars on the walls
of your dissolved concepts
pendulum between
cricket talk
honest large lips reply
message bottled into a computer screen
crossed the ocean of conception
immaculate
perception
dissolved into words
wonderful plastic smile

ears all blood and velvet
scratch riverbeds into their notebooks
fold into a boat and sail it
choose me over the ocean
eternal summer’s lemonade
laugh and wince and smirk and burst
poured in waves
momentary chasm
euphoric feeling like sugar

turn pages of rain
gravel heart driveway
fragile people
sitting on wagon stump
furnished souls and comfortable minds
fragment of angry candy
hard sweet
marbled against your eyelid
satin hold you in its smooth hand
bury the moon in you
waves goodbye
wet organdy
more substantial than
mormon fuck

stream of rhymes and homophones
pares of pair and fares of fairies
wire ewe?

inculcate inculcate inculcate inculcate
crumpled
sinking saturated faded
i am you and what i see is me
- Sarah Wagstaff

Cling to Dirt

Cling to Dirt

So he’s leaving me
like leftover dirt in the bottom
of an empty pot,
smiling painfully as I feel
the residue of roots and soil peeled
from my face and fingernails,
Bleeding.

Inhaling cigarette smoke
feeling sorry for myself-
antisocialism setting in like fog
billowing thickly in waves
of companionship,
Blinking.

Tarnish clinging to silver
with long-handled spoons, and gloved palms,
while black and green moss
creep over knuckles.
Their spores spread tenderly around
small grey mushrooms,
Suffocating.

White milk and smooth silk
cling to the sides of things
like wet shorts and dogs
and vinegar-stained laughter
lurching out of awkward mouths
with awkward knees,
Knocking.

He’s sitting there absent, deaf,
and indifferent like the statue
on his own tomb
a vegetative cripple staring
into the depth of a dirty pot,
Fingering.
- Sarah Wagstaff

Waiting

Waiting

We watch
a woman waiting for her bus walk by
chewing a piece of gum while her body trembles.
Her jaw shakes without stopping, without tiring,
because the muscles always twitch on and on
in some unceasing race to death
but she doesn’t notice because
age has come upon her like moss,
slowly and thick.
That which was once a sigh of exasperation
or annoyance has now become her sole existence.
Every inhalation will tell her if she is to continue being
or if she will, suffocated by that invasive fungus
become slow and soft too, until she is no longer slow
but has stopped completely and is no longer soft nor pungent.
She looks around hesitantly as if she expects some ruffian to
attack her with a knife and triumphantly steal
her already used tissues and pink inhaler.
A decade or seven of science has passed her by.
She seems to sense this now
as she is among the eager faces that flaunt progress.
In their presence she wrinkles her face and tightens her neck.
Her eyes are tired and she wants to sit down
but the benches are full and she’s afraid
of being vulnerable
of being left behind
of dying
of smiling
of buses.
- Sarah Wagstaff

The Way That Sand Feels

The Way That Sand Feels

I
The way that sand feels in your teeth
is like finding a raspberry in your Jell-o
a pebble in your pudding
a tumor in your brain.
The way that sunlight feels in the morning
a thousand origami swans
hung delicately swaying to bagpipe hymns
draped through the air like scarves of perfume.

At first loud and beautiful, then gradually smoothing
the rough spots and arranging bouquets of electrical tubing
beeping from a grey monitor suggesting a continuation of life
reproduction of matter, reproduction of days.
The way that sand feels in your mouth
callous against your gums and tongue is like polenta
grinding pumice as its kernels grate your teeth and throat.

The way that sand feels against your tongue
as it probes and finds every grain gently lodged
in the soft places between gums and teeth
is like finding bread crumbs in the butter
or awkward words on your lips
sticking and tripping until at last you’ve
formed a small sticky pearl
redundantly glossed over
shimmer gone, worth practically nothing.

II
The way that grass feels in your mouth
isn’t much of a feeling at all,
more of a pungent memory of childhood,
laughter and frozen peas,
dogs licking melted sugar off your checks and chin
scent of the color green when freshly trimmed
the sting as sharp blades cut your smooth shins
wet emerald that stains the seat of your trousers.

The way that cold feels in your mouth
doesn’t just stay in your mouth.
seeps into the roots of your teeth
deep: they chatter so hard it jars your insides
so your hands and nose and toes
don’t know how to move quickly or feel anything at all
turns your skin blue and freezes over your breath,
confuses your brain until you are exhausted
but still have that cold taste in your mouth
like blood and iron.

The way that home feels in your mouth
is tradition. The taste of warm handmade bread,
scent of laundry detergent and vanilla candles,
bed sheets spiced with cinnamon and lilac,
sight of familiar faces in black and white photographs
hung squarely in frames on walls
falling asleep reading books.
- Sarah Wagstaff