at birth
it says
iceberg, and then
crown
–
I have this story that can put
for you
a banana peel
on the floor
of the delivery room, this other
–
with a scarecrow
midway through it
looking all
tore up
like it was used
last night
as a fork
we had a baby together to solve our bug problem. god said all we had to do was read to it. the books made us look poor. some of them took batteries and, if struck, played music.
you is part lake and some bellies
were skipped
what creature
itches
at night
knowing
I have learned
to crawl
seasons by the look and smell of him being beaten.
a hole in a fingerprint. doll overboard.
THEY WERE BEARS, by Sarah Marcus (Sundress Publications, 2017)
review by Barton Smock
~
Absence is not a magic trick. In this book, there are enterings and leavings and a loneliness that says I am home because I am here. In one wilderness, Cleveland is one big hospital (from No Children), in another, The boar closes the distance (from Damage Ready)
This book will do nothing to curb your addiction to trajectory. As for continuance, I wasn’t sure I could go on after reading the last line of the first poem. Marcus maps her land early.
You will question your body throughout. Body are you wanderer or are you deserter. Are you mouth or are you feast. Body have you devoured my eyesight. Every last bit?
Vastness is local. Ruin, a tourist. Pain a forward thinking journalist still covering the moon as made for man.
Bears are here, are moving in and out of a crowd’s exodus from a costume party for symbols. Some bears are not here, but are sick of being spirits.
I wish I could bring only what I need. But what of the other, dragged as it was for being necessary?
Marcus is a writer of both inquiry and finality. She has stones, not for, but from, the stoning. In the book’s last entry (Revival, Revival), this phrase: Unspell me. I was broken before I broke. This author, she looks back. This journey had a following.
~
pre-order here:
https://squareup.com/store/sundress-publications/item/they-were-bears-by-sarah-marcus-pre-order
further:
my seven year old son keeps putting his hands in his diaper. evangelist.
worry is no teacher. birth no language and mouth no age. I tell you there is a comedy passed among the lower whites and I’ve heard them boast of taking blood’s coffin to the grave. I moonwalk in a poem about violence. am abused by animals for buying local
from the claustrophobe
her neglected
astronauts
dream told mom her fairy tale was having a nightmare
she sat up in a car being towed
–
the first time I seen beauty boy I thought my body was filling with mud
–
I came to in the knowledge of three gods
all pulling at the same creature
for pecking
at shadows
–
I washed my feet and my feet washed my ears
–
the woman
she don’t
cock her thumb
to shoot
birds
from a riding
mower
–
skin, the highlight
of any
birth
don’t pray
for the human
pretzel
kingsoftrain 