after Servant
Lacerate cheap seams, cobalt blue fur,
ribboned fluff around electrical veins —
extraction of camera demure.
Even the small in this house are not spared pain.
You live with a miracle, credit unclaimed
by the stranger whose name you know to be feigned —
chiseled on slate by two surnames the same
inside a cemetery in a town
she is supposed to be from. Your child in
unknown arms, you under her thumb, is grounds
for plush evisceration, invasion,
crawl spaces, camera in her bedroom wall.
You’re past the cute espionage protocol.
Kristin Garth is the author of eighteen books of poetry including Flutter Southern Gothic Fever Dream, The Meadow, and Candy Cigarette Womanchild Noir. She is the Dollhouse Architect of Pink Plastic House, a tiny journal and has a weekly sonnet podcast called Kristin Whispers Sonnets. Visit her site Kristingarth.com and talk to her on Twitter @lolaandjolie.
unpublishable 