Carla Sarett


they burned all of it 

barstool epics written 
    on matchbooks  
“the demise of the unseen 
   Feline Q”
“the tragic forgotten defeats of  
   termite armies”

once necessary letters
  to once
necessary mothers fathers etc 
   lovers god/s  
of winter fertility crows 
  tricksters etc.

now a pyre of Homeric self-pity
   sage-scented
they sleep in bright snow 
  not to feel 
cold itself but to feel what 
  cold feels
  
  
  
Interior Bedroom, Bleating Cries

My poem isn't a movie, or is it.
Scene One, Interior in bedroom 
No, Exterior, ledge a woman 
croons to a mad grey cat below.   
Fade to motel room on Sunset,
radio plays Peggy Lee, Fever.  
Man's POV: words Bleating Cries. 
Flashback, Interior Bedroom, red 
bedspread, man dressing, running 
out, naked woman moans.  Flash-
back, man holds mad grey cat.  Interior,  
he's grown old wizened in hotel, 
he is chain-smoking (since it's 
a movie) weeping (since it's a poem.)

practice

Other kids threw so I ran I mean really ran far from the playground before a really fast one hit me really hard or I ducked (why not.) Drs. blamed the army of barbies I beheaded in the bathtub, they floated & a Terrible Home Environment (Drs. said) but no one really shot themselves in our yard like those sad Russian plays my mother loved & no one I know really starved to death & I ran with no rules I ran far & I hid so no one could find me & no one can say I learned nothing.



Carla Sarett's recent poems appear in Prole, Blue Unicorn, San Pedro River Review, Journal of Compressed Creative Arts and elsewhere. The Looking Glass, a novella, will be published in October (Propertius); A Closet Feminist, her debut novel, will appear in 2022 (Unsolicited.) Carla lives in San Francisco.

 
 

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