Two Poems
by Sophie Apps
“Untie Me”
Time buried me in a casket – I gorge on your name;
Hungry for a different set of vowels and consonants.
In the dark, men come out to play; picking pockets.
My heart is a dead woman’s ring; her wrinkled skin;
The faded photograph of her husband – taken things.
I am tricked – you swallowed those three words I
Love You, fending them off with my clay ribs.
Loving you is a red ribbon asphyxiating; a noose
Necking; the air stuffed into an asthmatic’s lungs.
I am a masochist masticating on heartbreak.
These ribbons cuff my hands; binding our bodies.
Please don’t untie me is twirling and twisting like
rhythmic gymnastics spelt and spun into satin.
Slash, slice, axe my body; would it be love if I left?
“The Bridged Blood of a Dreamer”
I am the girl at the gas station
With flowers flowing through my hair;
Tourists trample through,
Pushing with elbows that hit like baseball bats.
I wish I could drive.
You are a metropolitan ellipsis;
Your hills are towering goosebumps on my chest
My loneliness is undressed, in this city; who am I?
You are everywhere I have been, and everywhere I have not.
Something familiar, but foreign; a mother’s face mended
Onto a fish’s frame. They cannot swim as we can.
I am the girl that has tasted your sea
But not swept in your swindling
Like these natives washed ashore with dyed dispositions.
They traded return tickets for clam currencies
And red-bricked boxes on floor one.
But, not me – I am the girl at the gas station.
There are girls frothing poetry
With dead flowers in their hair
Collecting coins in their coffins.
Their lunch breaks are over:
Back to signing worthless notepads.
I am the girl in the gas station.
City, do you notice me?
Or am I another speckle of blood
Marring your ironed fingers.
They think they love you,
But they don’t love you as I do.
I am the girl that birthed your gas fire.
Those nameless burning bodies
Are manufactured like jars of candy;
Their hands cannot even say goodbye,
But we gaze – me and the city –
At the bridged blood of the dreamers
That makes you stand.
