Sara Wainscott

[Cotton briefs folded in the package…]

          from The Star Cabins

Cotton briefs folded in the package
Taped around the cardboard insert
 
The nurse hovering whose holes
Who was all      who represents      who rearranges  
 
The figure’s manly ice columns 
Angels are the ones
 
Hovering who were once hovering
One penguin scared of the others
 
Except his friend
Who said we can practice
 
Looking at penguins
By looking at the penguins far away
 
I’m putting this here so I remember
The way your saying sounds
 
Though sound
Is one way to stay asleep
 
For those who waste 
Or who have become inured
 
For those who can find consolation
In verisimilitude two ships do not lose sight
 
For example [you] and [me] and the [night]
Did pass
 
In holy ever-loving rot
Preserve the dead who have been dead
 
So long they have perfected
Death you don’t need it
 
To die doing tricks for no reward
Makes the moon a simple pet
 
From this foul company be it removed
Bodily what might
 
This mean now
When it exists apart from the past
 
It becomes another
Inoculation
 
A little stick that only hurts
Yes baby for a moment and shoos
 
I’ve lost you I’ve lost you I’ve lost you I’ve lost you
Gladly flew and the flowering tree
 
Repairs its winter damage
By eating its buds
 
Which were helpless anyway
And owed their lives
 
Not even to the observer
Are you not tired the dead are tired
 
As cliché you should delete
They are already eaten and excreted
 
They have already eaten
A detail in a larger scheme

[The sky when it turned out to be cancer…]

          from The Star Cabins
​
​The sky when it turned out to be a cancer
The sky when it itched
 
The sky when it ate gnats
The sky when it ate children
 
The sky when it licked the lotus flowers
The sky when it grew too dry to lick
 
The sky when the awaited event occurred but no longer weighed much
The sky when the expected visitor arrived at the expected time
 
The sky when the chalk-white tablets filled the silver envelope
The sky when the pale blue tablets filled the silver envelope
 
The sky when the conversation was the same again
The sky when the conversation was the same
 
With one new topic
The sky when it was time to be seated
 
The sky when the microphone was passed
The sky when it was time to receive the guests
 
The sky when the sparks flew upward
The sky when the [I cannot write it Elizabeth]
 
The sky when the water-lily bloomed
The sky when I photographed the water-lily
 
The sky when oars in tandem smote the sea
The sky when what could there be
 
To worry about
Enjoyment    enjoy      n joy n joy
 
Whether anyone is entitled to it
Whether I am
 
Doing enough to earn a quiet summer week
But the star cabins but the star cabins
 
You have read this far without me you have lived
This long in one town on one state highway in the same gray house
 
You should be kinder to yourself you should allow yourself
To enjoy the fucking fruits of your fucking labors
 
But this would force the admission that your labors have worth
You are showing your ass you are showing off
 
You trash with your own car your TSA Pre-3® the things you give
The government they had already the things you own
 
Own you food should be ugly enough to eat but
Good enough to photograph good enough at walking to walk
 
Each daylit hour through the mountain the green plastic
Bottles mark the miles the bus pulls up
 
The glacier trail the gemblue falls
The water the water the rain the rain the rain
 
The rain the rain the rain the rain the rain the rain
The rain help me Elizabeth the rain on your mouth
 
I will say the rain the rain the rain the rain the rain the rain
The rain the rain






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Sara Wainscott is the author Insecurity System, winner of the 2019 Lexi Rudnitsky First Book Prize from Persea Books, and a chapbook, Queen of the Moon (dancing girl press, 2017).