Two Poems by Katie Berta

Two Poems: Katie Berta

[Mouth-bound and sent out from my parents’ house]

Mouth-bound and sent out from my parents’ house, I stumbled on many people who were variously rapacious, always back-footedly and with, only, a very permeable crust, which they were always sticking their fingers through. It sucks, to build a middling-high ACEs score and then to get booted out into “real life.” A series of things that seem acceptable to you, because they’ve already, in a way, been inflicted. It would be lovely to be redone like a face in Photoshop, someone lifting everything that sags, smudging away all the spots that represent a place where, a day when, the sun was too sharp. I want a mind that’s blank. Untouched, a baby’s skin, pores so fine on her face it’s like you’re running a hand over perfectly smooth paper. Original sin, so absurd in the face of—. Of course, sin is something visited on something blank, then absorbed into it, like ink, but—. Absorbed in then reflected, spit back out.

[Nobody’s favorite]

Nobody’s favorite, when you went out then returned, they didn’t seem to notice, you thought. In fact, the world had gotten so icy while you were away, it seemed to slip by frictionlessly, never really touching you. You look down at your hands and see how aged they are, which were once supple and sort of vigorous. Is it just the dryness of the winter air? You’ve been accruing things in your travels, prodigal outlay, and now the family dog doesn’t even recognize you. Draped as you are in anonymous finery. Smelling as you are of somewhere strange. His (your dog’s) master dead and gone and him fallen on evil times, from his perspective. You can’t get back home again, unfortunately. The dog is like twenty and you are like twenty years older. Those twenty years felt like fifty, estranged, as you were, from this island in yourself. Surrounded by water and scanning the horizon for land, estrangement has become a pose within you.