Poetry by Ellora Sutton- Death is a bit in everything I write, it is a bit in everything

Death is a bit in everything I write, it is a bit in everything

It is because I know that there are bigger tragedies
I tell myself that rain is the worst thing that can happen.

*

Driving in the dark
we snap
the milk wrist of the road
like a hairpin.

The night tastes like Gershwin

which means both
orgiastic jazz
and
died tragically young.

*

Sometimes my coping mechanism is a cog of steam.
Sometimes my coping mechanism is a bear trap.

*

A cricket pitch
is a great place
to suck dew
from stubble. Marrow,
like a hog.

The morning tastes like James Dean

which means both
what have you done
and
died tragically young

or Jesus Christ

which means both
you’re going to hell
and
here’s a backdoor key
to my dad’s place.

*

My one never-ending summer is ongoing, an American highway,
ringed liked Saturn with gunshots and telephone wire.

*

I embroider myself
to the lawn,

watch planes
and think

what flowers would I be
if they fell?

Sometimes it feels like
all the stitches will unpick

and that is how the sun sets,
without edges, burning like a memory,

that is how the world ends –

motherfucker

which means both
Oedipus
and
here, my eyes.

Author’s Note

I wrote this poem shortly after being put on antidepressants and reading a lot of Ocean Vuong. It started with the third stanza, following a conversation with my doctor in which she encouraged me to try meditation, the “cog of steam”, rather than my usual “bear trap”. The rest of the poem sprouted up around those two lines. I wanted to capture that feeling of being in limbo, of not quite feeling anything at all – those hours or days when all you can do is drift. I’ve been trying to get Gershwin into a poem of mine for far too long, and am delighted to have finally succeeded.