Tuesday poem #208 : Adrienne Gruber : Dämmerschlaf

birth is but a sleep and a forgetting

                                                William Wordsworth

Twilight come

find me

in the bathtub

breathing drowning

writhing trapezist

steam vultures

my head there

but not really

there

everywhere

suckled pig

naked branded

flailing blanketed

peeled cored

alone alone

window ajar

keep sweating

can’t stop

wetting

in piss vomit

oh god

my poor pussy

I don’t believe

in survival

for all women

die this babe

is mine

or monster

every inch of

my fat lacerates

iron sear

smolder

between fetal pulse

somehow I sleep

the deep of pure

loathing

my satiety spun

stomach cistern

of bile

Twilight we are high

tripping off each

other’s vibe

the way you move

your fingers

through my hair

so rad

I once sucked back

by the river

a bunny cat

hopped by

afraid I’d retch

instead spun circles

now shank cramps

thick absorption

perhaps she atrophies

canal crushed

skull dissolved

bread crumbs for

birds

I forget her

cranium when I

come to

just wrap that

old doll

in a blanket

put it to my tit

that’ll do

We don’t need drugs

to join each

other the cosmos

that terrestrial

fear is a net

catches

drunk limbs

ocean sputter

fever swallows

my climax

you tricked me

my request

don’t forget

during your rounds

don’t pass me by

every dream I have

is for you

for us

I lost control

it doesn’t matter

you never came

Adrienne Gruber is the author of two full-length poetry collections, Buoyancy Control (BookThug) and This is the Nightmare (Thistledown Press), and three chapbooks, Mimic (Leaf Press), Everything Water (Cactus Press) and Intertidal Zones (Jack Pine Press). She has been a finalist for the CBC Literary Awards, Descant’s Winston Collins Best Canadian Poem Contest and twice for ARC’s Poem of the Year Contest. Her poem Gestational Trail was awarded first prize in the Antigonish Review’s Great Blue Heron Poetry Contest in 2015 and she won the bpNichol Chapbook Award for Mimic in 2012. Adrienne lives in Vancouver with her family.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan