s a r a h b a r t l e t t

s a r a h b a r t l e t t

from My Only Living Relative

GHOST PRINTS
	Our mouths resuscitate like mended sleeves I am laid out a pale line on the floor next to you It's no use pretending all the books on shelves don't say something about desire a lifetime of content gathering for the real history I slide between them feel you run your finger down the spines I am a savage my body's puppet rising up sharp and sure as an arrow on a windless morning
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THE RODEO
	When I walk around the neighborhood at night I'm an orphan outside every lit window You were with me in this arena wildly breaking me in families framed in the background eating their dinner Your absence a loosed animal running from the rope All my rings want to fall off my fingers I remind myself to make a fist
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SEPTEMBER
	Wind whips its tail around the corner while backyard bonfires smoke Fall into the air No one can find you Are you sitting somewhere with a child in your lap The same lap the same chair all of which I sat inside love loosing itself from the bones of trees We are looking everywhere for you Myself the child I'll send the rain next The snow The mice Something to flush you out of hiding with the gentlest hands
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NIGHT TERRORS
	How can a house have so many doors You are making more to walk through I sit on the couch wait for you to finish You walk out You walk back in say a different kind of exit is called for and begin making one through my chest It’s a mercy my sternum splinters blackbirds circling their roost It's enough to stop you For just a moment you actually look at me
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SARAH BARTLETT lives in Portland, OR. Her chapbook, Freud Blah Blah Blah, is forthcoming from Rye House Press. She is the co-author of two chapbook collaborations: Baby On The Safe Side (Publishing Genius in 2011) and A Mule-Shaped Cloud (horse less press 2008). Her recent work has appeared in: Swine, Ilk, iO, Eleven Eleven, Phantom Limb, Heavy Feather Review, Spork, Sixth Finch, NOÖ, inter\|rupture, and elsewhere.

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