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