Carol Berg

Self-Portrait as Freak

                                          
There is a shape to my darkness to my lost
bones. I chew the enamel from my chipping
teeth, chew on my misfiring synopses.
Inside my head I sit in all the empty
pews. Light up all my orange candles
chanting in the language of fragments.
Inside my head the flocking birds, the constant
veering wings. The unstoppable
vines spinning through my veins.
My mouth filling up with unspittable seeds.​
​

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Self-Portrait as Waterworld

I am your amusement ride.
I am tattoos and belly bolts.
You will stand in a solitary line.
There is a funhouse.
I will spurt for you. I will twirl.
I will blister the bottoms
of your feet. There will be
screams and the sounds
of propulsion. My running
water will sort your bones
by size. There is a luminescent light
a white like something held
inside the body, teeth or bone.
The signs, the maps. You are here.
Still. Someone always disappears.





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Carol Berg’s poems are forthcoming or in Weave, Pebble Lake Review, Fifth Wednesday Journal, qarrtsiluni, blossombones, and elsewhere. Two chapbooks, Ophelia Unraveling (dancing girl press), and Small Portrait and the Woman Holding A Flood In Her Mouth (Binge Press), are forthcoming.