AUGUST

I have a body—I move it under the underpass,
past the house vomiting itself into the street,
lightly wheezing in the last of the day.

August, no meeting, grease stained sheets from the ointment,
ghosts of unfamiliar men spluttering across the quilt.
Hunger leaves only liquid across the mouth,
a word I have learned and its meaning.

I want to drink down a smaller name.
I want to walk.

My two heads in summer—one inside a backpack,
wrapped in a tablecloth, one slung under an arm,
switched off.

DRAW AGAIN

Our beloved dead have come home to outfit us.
Stand on a chair in your sock-feet.

They will line your seams, stuff your sleeves.
Let down your hems, now.

Plucking from corsages of pins in fine paper crowns,
they draw floss through our giant shadows,
draw again.

ALPHAVILLE IN TWILIGHT

You give him your cut hair in a plastic bag. The future has long been very boring, but you are only now just arriving. What will finally make you cry out is taking back the skin and seeing crystals hot glued around the holes. You give him your cut hair in the bag, and the largest roar comes on, replacing the familiar ticking. Alphaville in twilight is a glass wave of nothing—a gif-set of a mausoleum. The hair is clean and smells sweet and close, gathered with an elastic, because it is still a little damp. It curls and quietly rubs against itself as you knot the bag handles together.

Sarah Pinder is the author of the poetry collection Cutting Room (Coach House Books, 2012). Her writing has been shortlisted for the Expozine Small Press Awards and included in magazines like Geist, Arc Poetry Magazine, and Poetry Is Dead. A zine-maker of over a decade, you can find her work in Montreal’s Distroboto art vending machines, as well as a mailbox near you. She lives in Toronto. Visit bitsofstring.wordpress.com.

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