SophieKlahr 's poetry and essays may be found in Ploughshares, The Rumpus, The Rattling Wall, and The Normal School, among others. She the author of the chapbook ___________ Versus Recovery (Pilot Books) and the poetry editor of Gigantic Sequins. She was born and raised in Pittsburgh, PA, and currently lives in Houston, TX.
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Opening Night
Dear Opiate, touch each photograph,
each frame of my spit-
wet skin suggesting a scene
to be lit and played. Translate my body
like Adam naming animals. I’ve been
trying not to mention your marriage but
one must not put a loaded rifle on the stage
if no one is thinking of firing it, so let’s
get to it, better to know
what we’ve got, take inventory:
Here is a photograph where my legs appear
to you as wings Here is a photograph of my eye
you call a bright pill Here, there are no photographs
of my hands Here, systems of lips Here, (turn the body)
the spinal column, then buried, clustered nerve-stars
galloping from palm to cunt to sole, this picture
where the bed is a feeling you can’t shake, a box
containing ticket stubs, sea stones, a paper house,
a meadow, a film, a string of red lights—
It’s a dream. There’s a stage, a girl, a bed, a gun.
You want her to be a room you can disappear
into for awhile. The gun goes off and something
breaks into you, like a shard of glass that could get
in your eye, forever. You want to click your heels together three times but
that’s the wrong movie— And you were there, and you, and you—
and all of our movies, aren’t they about going home?
There’s a bed, a stage, a gun, a girl.
There’s a code of X’s, a sweet name,
an extra key & how,
when we speak from afar,
you always say
you’re going home
Dawn
Greyed at edges, seal-like, luminous,
he crouches naked to gather clothing we flung
last night around the room. Swims unearthly
through the morning air. Father-like, he holds
a spoon to my mouth, full of syrup.
A raw swarm of music, this becoming.
To desire the whole of a man is new, seems
both excess and necessity. To know I’d lick
his feet, his hair, the sleep from his eyes.
We underestimate what animal traffics are still
within us. Bless your crooked teeth, your appendix scar.
I am the young one, come to suckle and absolve you.
Photographs I Have Taken While You Slept
— from down the hall: in the doorframe, light from the bedroom windows nearly
erasing where you lay like a man beaten, one arm reaching down as if
your fingertips were skimming water
your fingertips were skimming water
— the rotting porch like a tongue jutting from the mouth of that one motel room
outside San Antonio, coyotes talking yellow all night
— self-portrait: mouth open and lifting a hand over it.
red nails, winter light, a cactus. you upstairs.
— foreground: my neck, shoulder, and collarbone. background: your body
spread open as if you'd been dropped from a great height, Eastern Standard
Time slowly lifting, taking leave
Time slowly lifting, taking leave