Bonnie Emerick

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          is how we

               say we

     have nothing

                 to say

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Repeats Our Difference

We echo trouble
            in every frame.

            Talk its very flame.

The caught hesitation of apostrophe
            of a second consonant’s fame.

Capsized titles the boat on tide.

I walk with eyes
            into as if—

            the it behind inanimate.

S always calls mine
            to mind:

            gap of near
                        err in ownership

            gasp of slur
                        hand over lips

            —not the in of intimate.

Still the seen window. Plexiglass will cabin the keel.

            If I saw color
                        I would be chaired

                        in red fever.

            Walk with me now
                        our false epiphanies

                        the nearer air.

            Play let go
                        of a name’s despise

                        puppetted on another.

Marionette

Imagine marionette.

Image marionette self.

Imagine image self as S marionette.

            Evidence :: Image Self :: The Former Lives

                        I Witness :: Eye Truth

Image in womb manipulation :: S marionette genetics

            Injury Blindness

            Witnesses disturb
                        in another way

                        will forget
                        strongly attracts freedom
                                                from events.
                       

            Will—             willed—                       amnesia.

            How many
                        times. Do not
                                                know. Do not
                                                                     read.

                        Odd walker veteran’s touch
                                    spirals.

Down like mouth.
Down like eyes.
Down not look.

                        Sleep.                          Willed.
            Will.                            Sleep.

                        Absolve injury blindness?

            Ten year girl        sheets          to the wind.

Susannah One
“I set off a mine/ Susannah/ I prevented nothing”
—Anne Portugal (trans. Norma Cole)

Limbs whose lineaments sing
            neither guilt nor sin.

Not bowed wood, I tip
            a head to altars

            on command.

                        ♦

Let’s draws me—

            manipulate Susannah.

Witness, a judge, a god

            though twelve or three may substitute.
                       

                        ♦

Televised courtrooms distance

            common eyes
           
            unable to view

            the judge erect

            during her testimony.

                        ♦

Susannah washes her hands
            at the TV-land Berenstein Bears exhibit.

I say                            I saw.

Courtroom drama in public bathroom.

                                    Here. Puke & piss place.

The logic                     confrontation.

                        ♦

Replicate forsakes

            confusion

                        for the sake of

                                    fabrication.

In the regression episode

            evidence speaks

                        proving true a body’s

                                    former lives.

                        ♦

The girl despises her but wants to
           
            locate original.

Susannah at the fair. Susannah eating an elephant ear.
Picking peaches. Pitting cherries with the mother.

            One-plus-one wrinkle in time.

            Pictures worth more than
                        one thousand words.

            Susannah clones
                        herself, writes a trigger into

                        her shotgun story.

            No finger, she creates
                        finger post-trigger.

                        ♦

Which Susannah

                        is not

                                    One?

Disbelief, another

                        way to

                                    extend pain.

Where does it hurt? How does it hurt?

Like this? Like this. Like this? Like this. Like this?
Like this. Like this? Like this. Like this?

Of Two Sisters

If two sisters across
                        whose weight would image
                        reproduce?

If I were of two sisters
                        and not a suffix named afterthought
                        the image would snag.

The lapse of less
                        when captionless. Spatially
                        one is hopeful.

Cropped angle unaccompanies
                        her heavy voices
                        trunking.

In constant company of
                        of the entrapped
                        clause.

Lure-suffix to snag
                        a yesterday. Sore-tongued
                                    days fail trust.

Bonnie Emerick teaches at Armstrong Atlantic State University in Savannah, GA. She holds an MFA from Colorado State University. Her poetry has been published in Caketrain, Diner, Interim, Quarter After Eight, So To Speak,  the tiny, and elsewhere. New work is forthcoming in Cannibal and Little Red Leaves..