“Bath” and “On Paying a Lot of Attention to Death and Not a Lot of Attention to Life”
By Sylvia Foster
Bath
I lock the door
I shed a skin
I see in layers—
the door at the foot of the stairs,
the front door,
the bathroom door,
me
spinning but not
luminous I pinch myself
with mirrors and whisper
‘nevermind’
inside, my flesh becomes a child
a ruddy baby I lather in a sink
I scrub this quiet self
whose thoughts won’t run clear
After,
the child kneels in the tub and dams its fingers
trying to catch our filth before it runs down the drain
On Paying a Lot of Attention to Death
and Not a Lot of Attention to Life
I wonder if fear has magnetism
if that’s why blood keeps spilling
in the streets of hometowns
blue lights on the highway & I am
a crushed truck in the median
unscathed vehicles accelerating on either side
there aren’t any dream bullets in my dream gun
two high-powered rounds
through duct-tape heart
I jolt from dreamdeath
eyes wide head snap
fear keeps asking why I’m still alive
Sylvia Foster is a poet from the South. Her poetry engages with mental illness and surreality, prodding existential dread and the inconstancies of the self. Her work has appeared in Beyond Words Literary Magazine, Sad Girl Diaries, and elsewhere. She is currently in the MFA Program for Creative Writing at the University of Arkansas.
