The Talking Cure

My therapist’s carpet is electrostatic,
meaning a mistake would be dreadful.
Pocketful of combustible lemon grime.
I am tall enough to be intimidating. 

Ÿ* 

I cannot tell whether his eyes are water,
foam, or shoal. This is either what
people call anxiety or what they call gray. 

*

At dinner, red hair was delicately
looped on my plate.
Russet, rust, copper, dusk.
The strands imported from Scotland,
a river stone in Wick.
The exterminator came in
and served my mother lashes. 

The most flattering thing
you can do for someone is pretend
that he’s tragically dead. Ÿ

*

Our hour’s gone to the pines
and we’re still smoothing fabric
under a nickel-shined window.

Crushed hemlock, frostbite,
fire with baby in arms,
train crash with baby in arms,
an unspeakable accident
in the chokecherry garden,
a sparrow fast in the throat.

 

 

Sara Henry won the Foyle Young Poets award in 2010 and her work has appeared in Magma, The Moth Magazine, SOFTBLOW, and Word Riot, among others. One may find her winning Foyle poem, “Work Night,” on the inside back cover of John Grisham’s Theodore Boone, one of the books distributed for UK and Ireland’s World Book Night 2014. She lives in Brooklyn, New York. 

Sara Henry
Sara Henry won the Foyle Young Poets award in 2010 and her work has appeared in Magma, The Moth Magazine, SOFTBLOW, and Word Riot, among others. One may find her winning Foyle poem, "Work Night," on the inside back cover of John Grisham's Theodore Boone, one of the books distributed for UK and Ireland's World Book Night 2014.