Self-Portrait as Monster in the Shape of a Woman
the skies are full of them—Adrienne Rich
I haunt my own house
alone most of the day,
sleeping cats, snore of dog.
Time flies like wood
peckers to the hanging suet,
the red-bellied and downy
ones and then they’re gone.
Time: gone or so long.
I say I got the kalanchoe
to bloom red again
but does merely watering
something keep it alive?
I guzzle the water out of my
glass bottle as if my whole
life were inside, my blooms
long shriveled up as gravity
grabs my belly and lines litter
my eyes. I don’t know my body
anymore except its exactly
as it was when I was a child,
waiting for something
to change, waiting for something
to flow out of me.
alone most of the day,
sleeping cats, snore of dog.
Time flies like wood
peckers to the hanging suet,
the red-bellied and downy
ones and then they’re gone.
Time: gone or so long.
I say I got the kalanchoe
to bloom red again
but does merely watering
something keep it alive?
I guzzle the water out of my
glass bottle as if my whole
life were inside, my blooms
long shriveled up as gravity
grabs my belly and lines litter
my eyes. I don’t know my body
anymore except its exactly
as it was when I was a child,
waiting for something
to change, waiting for something
to flow out of me.
Carol Berg’s poems are forthcoming or in Crab Creek Review (Poetry Finalist 2017), Cumberland River Review, DMQ Review, Spillway, Redactions, Radar Poetry, and Up the Staircase Quarterly. Her chapbooks, Her Vena Amoris (Red Bird Chapbooks), and “Self-Portraits” in Ides (Silver Birch Press) are available. Her poems have been nominated for Pushcart Prizes and Best of the Net and Best New Poets. She was winner of a scholarship to Poets on the Coast and a recipient of a Finalist Grant from the Massachusetts Cultural Council.
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