With the shrieks of 10,000 Angels, Sara’s poem forces 10,000 insurance companies to fall to their knees in terror at meeting “the daughter of a solitary fish” speaking with the language of “a small but savage town.”
When they found me scraping
my ugly little teeth against the
pavement, my diagnosis was
dental. When they sent me to
the actual dentist, my diagnosis
was an eight-fold path.
No one could tell me anything
because my diagnosis was small
and vegetal.
When my diagnosis was glass-jar
heart, the treatments were: wild
hare, water of rye and water of
snake.
My diagnosis was a never-
ending receipt.
Sorting rocks from beans until she kills all desire, Ethel carries a shovel as if she really knows how to dig a grave. When she is let loose inside the orchard, she is a wide-eyed god, dehydrated and convulsing. Nailed to the ground, laughing with the sun in her eyes, she is dreaming of a videotape about an even more disposable fashion. Fashioning a wound or planning for gestalt, out in the field or trapped in the cloisters, she fingers the firmament and role-plays a joy, then vomits all over the sanctuary carpet.
Sara Lefysk runs Ethel Zine & Micro Press.
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Published by betweenthehighway, 12.7 × 7.5 cm, Softcover, 2024,
