Sleeping like the dead is from A Registry of Omens. Everything I earn from sales of my poetry goes to Room to Read!
Sleeping like the dead
I can sleep
in the shape of death.
The coroner loves me,
for I can turn my head,
my legs,
my hands,
all of me
shrinking or enlarging
and folded
into exact replicas
of the women they
find
in suitcases and
in ditches on the side of the road and
in bathtubs and
in garbage bags and
in refrigerators.
I can unhinge myself
everywhere
and twist
so that they can
answer their questions.
Was she dead when they put her in?
What part of her went in first?
Did they have to break that bone to put her in,
or did they break it before that?
It’s always the same questions, and
sometimes I
take a nap,
while they talk.
I don’t dream,
but
sometimes the women come as apparitions,
last moments
locked in their distorted
broken bodies.
Some try to help,
showing me what happened,
but others
others are stuck
looping
where the last punch came,
how it felt
when the knife went in,
what it was like to suffocate.
When I rise back out of
the suitcase
or refrigerator
or cardboard box
or car trunk
I need
to bathe
and stretch
and listen to myself
breathing
until true sleep,
no dreams,
comes.
