Dreams in which I become something else
I am a dead, bald chicken gathering up
my plucked feathers scattered across
the Isle of Barra whilst being pursued
by a red-hot oven called Sloane.
I am the lone spectator as someone takes
a knife to the pink house; blood trickles
from sash windows and down the hill.
I sniff a herb bouquet to relieve the smell.
I am a bundle of litter and dirty feathers
that some grief-stricken woman treats
like a baby; I go around tied to her back.
Today she will buy me shoes.
I am a Caithness vase tightening my mouth
into a high-pitched whistle.
Oh, how I love to whistle! Whistle until
the chairs at the dining room table burst into flames!
The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau
What ocean still resembles this?
No plastic drifts or tangled buoys.
Our Jacques smoothly catches a ride
on the back of a giant sea turtle
before shining a light in the face
of an abashed grouper.
Peril music. A small shark.
We cut to the rush of bubbles
from Jacques’ yellow submarine
then curtains of fish and fish and fish –
so many Jacques could never part them.
____________
Sarah Sibley’s poems have appeared in Under the Radar, Strix, Spelt, Agenda,Orbis, and Obsessed with Pipework. Her first pamphlet The Withering Room was published by Green Bottle Press in 2015. Instagram: @sib_sarah
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