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the poet
Sarah Fletcher is an American-British poet whose poems have appeared in The White Review, The Rialto and Poetry London. Her most recent pamphlet, Typhoid August was published in 2018 by The Poetry Business. She is currently working on the full-length collection, PLUS ULTRA.
the poems
Capitulation
i.
Feigning the playfulness of
Mother-May-I he asks for
a days-of-the-cane
throwback I
refuse
Back then I tendered my touch
more dearly I lived in his kiss
for so long I was born in it
Now anechoic and him
a guerrillista of nettles and wit
I can give him what he came for
and what he now resists
ii.
The decapitated photograph
of a torso
Sexless in the high contrast
tender in the anonymous
lust-trade
is constant as static to my mind
like my friend describing the sting
her boyfriend draws from her
heels tied and
does she feel like a present
as he tightens the ribbons
so tell me what is your
luxury and who delivers it
iii.
All the milkmaids inconsequential
as achoo have jostled into
wakefulness at his arrival
they are burning their hems
legs rising like the vim
of popped champagne
he says Thank You
but I did not mean to revive him
you fucking dirty pigeon of a man
The Garden of Love’s Sleep
After Messian’s Turangalila
Dinner is poured Then: his hand on mine —
Instead
of sensation
I receive
The dream
Of two green peacocks
Pouring smooth grails of touch
Each across the other
Necks arched in extravagant,
Romantic love.
*
Insomnia swells a congealing city
Congests each head with phrases:
"A horse called Horus or just Birdy” “A wine press named War on Earth”:
Those haute couture contraptions from the ancién French regime
*
Áwake Who is with me? Whó
Will unhook
The colours’ ruffles from sunrise
Each by each?
When we talk about Manifestos
I feel white
Doves sprung from a Magician’s
Sleeves on sleeves
Release
In this state
And at this event
*
On open caboose On train to Vladivostok
Mosquitoes are breeding quickly in the dark
Clouds’ petticoats uncross Cross again
Flashing the sun from which we cannot hide
Which catches us
Spoiled and sticky
Like Love’s Sunday
*
The emperor’s clothes are very beautiful and they
Are very real I remember them like the song
That climbs back to me in snatches: Harbouring
The antiseptic beauty ` Harpooning
the August moon Haranguing
the something something something Noon
*
Have we slept? I’ve found us
Flabberghastly Clean and glamorose
Like the courtesan who appears here
And all other places in a new state
age dress civility
Having forgot the crashing sound of a beating door
The stench of a night closing in
Endarkening O Carrion!
*
At last
Something beautiful arrives!
The equal weightéd phrase
That leaves your mouth and the sky
At the same time
The Judgment
‘It’s not supposed to be like that’ he said
and then accused me of embellishing
it all. But I swore I told him nothing
more or less than how it really felt.
‘Embellishing’s for dresses’ I explained,
holding my ground.
‘Dresses,’ he repeated,
looking down, ‘then what are you?’
I told him how I felt like rotting fruit,
which is to say too sticky
and browned-over at the edges;
how my lips became a pith to be peeled off.
And how we moved like we were
drowning, but in the way a horse
might drown, which is to say,
showing resistance. Which is to say,
still looking for some ground,
some anything, something
to stand on and start galloping.
He sighed, and said that I sounded all wrong;
it should be different, that with him, it would be different.
‘How’s it supposed to feel then, sir?’ I asked.
He smirked and pulled me in, administering
the Bible-black conviction of his kiss,
the hands-in-hair pulp of his love.
I felt my body pull; my legs go weightless once again.
He whispered in my ear ‘like this.’
Publishing credits
The Judgment: The Rialto
Capitulation: Typhoid August (The Poetry Business)
The Garden of Love’s Sleep: The White Review (Issue 26)