(via lifeinpoetry)
from JULIET (I) ……Because I used to be young. I used to have a family.
I used to gather myself in my arms like a wild
bunch of daisies. I used to have arms
that didn’t look like ghosts, sad bag of bones
draped with skin that doesn’t
want to be skin. I used to grow
a garden. I used to grow
a body. Now I mix tequila with limes
and call it dinner, think all my thoughts perfectly
and hope no one dumps their babies in the river tonight.
This particular combination of delight in the universe and the speaker’s desire for death will remind many of Sexton. Yet Certa has made the subject of depression, and the way it may present death as a constant choice, into wholly her own investigation of the way “[her] bones are laced too tight.” The failing relationship at the center of the manuscript is interesting, yet the relationship of the speaker to her own body and the concept of remaining within it takes on precedence. She repeatedly asserts “this is me” while, without acknowledgement, therapists offer their opinions: “They keep telling me I’m too high-functioning/ for a full-blown diagnosis.” This is the contradiction that takes on the most pain—one for which there is no explanation or release, in which the state of humanity may simply be to pain from awareness of mortality.
image macro by sarha certa
I recorded a poem for you. “Sad Circus Tents” from my forthcoming full-length collection: Nothing to Do With Me, University of Hell Press, spring 2015.
My newest chapbook, out now from H_NGM_N.
It’s free & ready for you to download: http://www.h-ngm-n.com/chaps
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Trauma: Like this the truth trickles down to you. Slowly you peel back one layer at a time. You built walls in defense but now you live inside a house inside a house inside a house. You live underground. It is safer to be dead but you realize you’re not ready for that. Slowly you unearth your grave.
CW: rape
from Juliet, Act II, scene i
Then one sunny Sunday afternoon in July you read a story about a girl who was raped by a man she thought was her friend, a man she thought was maybe a little beautiful, a man she thought maybe she could date, and you have heard the word rape before,…
My poem on anorexia in The Medical Journal of Australia
Author of Red Paper Heart
I’m on Goodreads now if you wanna find me xo