“I was involved in the serious business of ripping apart my own body. I’d run my fingers over it, seeking but never finding the right point of entry, so having to tear one myself, though midway through I’d always tire, and let night enter like a silver needle, sewing my eyelids shut. This was not an original practice, but thinking, for a time, that it was felt like being able to choose when spring would arrive: engineering an April that opened like a parasol, even in thoroughest winter. ”
—Sara Peters, The Last Time I Slept in this BedThe Last TIme I Slept In This Bed
I was involved in the serious business
of ripping apart my own body.
I’d run my fingers over it,
seeking but never finding
the right point of entry,
so having to tear one myself,
though midway through
I’d always tire,
and let night enter
like a silver needle,
sewing my eyelids shut.
This was not an original practice,
but thinking, for a time, that it was
felt like being able to choose
when spring would arrive:
engineering an April
that opened like a parasol,
even in thoroughest winter.
—Sara Peters
from Sara Peters, "My Sister And I, We Know We Are Filth"
My sister and I, we know we are filth, and so we proceed with great caution
when we enter the world that was saved for us—
unlocking our mother’s door, prying open her chest,
plunging our hands in the powder and silk—
we know we could be in her bedroom for years,
and yet we forgot to pack meat for our journey.
Orchids and lilies pattern her walls. When we tire of smelling
our own bodies, we spray her perfume in the air
and it rises in a sparkling fount, lingers, then falls. Now
I rip a velvet headband with my teeth. I spit
the sequins at my sister. Now she is using our mother’s tweezers
to pluck black hairs from beneath her navel,
while I turn my face to the vaulted ceiling
and hold my breath till the sparks come.
from Sara Peters, "Romance"
Everyone’s a serious seventeen.
And so, one night, we married in the woods—
though having to make curfew spoiled the mood.
You wore, of course, a kind of smock.
I was bright as a jester in metres
of daffodil gauze, my metals
dyeing my skin. We had, we knew, it all:
the chalices, the incense, the Lovers’ Tarot deck—
and, nearby, the baptizing rush of river. The air smells
like the mulch of primeval concupiscence! I cried,
and what could you do by agree?
The Last Time I Slept in This Bed
I was involved in the serious business
of ripping apart my own body.
I’d run my fingers over it,
seeking but never finding
the right point of entry,
so having to tear one myself,
though midway through
I’d always tire,
and let night enter
like a silver needle,
sewing my eyelids shut.
This was not an original practice,
but thinking, for a time, that it was
felt like being able to choose
when spring would arrive:
engineering an April
that opened like a parasol,
even in thoroughest winter.
from Poetry (February 2013)
I Understood Our Time Was Running Out
by Sara Peters
For Julie
I understood our time was running out,
so I planned a winter picnic, and privately decided
not to eat. We drove past petrified trees,
and thankfully we passed a cyclist
with prayer cards woven through his spokes—
so he provided talk until
we reached the cove. You spread a collapsed cardboard box
over seagrass blown the wrong way,
while I unpacked my obvious fruits and vegetables:
pomegranate, artichoke heart, cherry.
Some people bag the first head they see.
I’d chosen lettuce as carefully
as a ball gown, comparing ruffles.
But soon we were noting a summer A-frame,
nodding our emptying heads, and as if at a chess game
we stared at the square foot between us.
Soon I’d try on your glasses, you’d play with my lighter,
a few feet away foam came off the water
and dolloped the rocks, and a plastic doll torso
was eight waves away from arriving:
armless legless sucked and beaten clean.
—The Walrus, September 2011
Cryptid
by Sara Peters
You saw her once, at Esquimault Harbor,
when you were a three-year-old boy called Oscar.
While you staggered over the sand,
slippery with SPF 50,
your parents humped on the beach towel,
to Lou Reed singing “Sweet Jane.”
Lipless, lidless, five slits in her throat,
her rosy larynx furled in and out.
You laughed at her boa: seaweed, rusted forks.
She tore up a starfish, swallowed its points.
You offered, as truce, some Sun Maid raisins.
She spread out, to amuse you, all forty fingers.
Finding you gone, your father sprinted over the sand
(long legged, in one Birkenstock)
while your mother stayed right there!, sat on her heels,
gasping into a brown paper bag.
Later, your parents noticed the salt taste of your skin,
called you their little potato chip.
Your mother combed sand from your hair,
your father found beach grass in your bed.
Now, they sleep to the sound of rogue waves crashing. Dreaming,
they pick their way through dying jellyfish
to find you waiting (not for them) behind a rock,
content amid the iridescent quivering.
1996 by Sara Peters
This is what I wrote in my notebook as I read Sara Peters’ brilliant 1996. Somehow the notes I made, spaced and toothed like Peters’ own work, lean at a tweezered precision I can’t quite get at in prose. These chevrons pointing right up my arms, separated by Peters’ parts, cool metals on the corners of the insides of my elbows.
