Resolving To End Things
Sarah Yost
There are things, then,
that need to be done.
A belting down of—
A gathering up of—
A folding in upon—
The leather of the leash
bites the peeling husk of the hand
as it turns the head, chafes
the tender neck
but does not break it.
There are things, too,
that must be expunged.
Boils to be lanced,
blisters popped,
splinters dug out from flesh
with hot needle tips
sterilized in match flame.
Blood to be let down.
Habits to crack
like chicken bones.
Driving to work,
I saw clothes strewn
across the sidewalk,
a mattress torn open,
frothing foam,
its coiled metal guts
disemboweled—
everything exposed.
A front lawn littered
with a discarded life—
cold declarations of No
slick in the March rain.
The sky chartreuse—
a blooming bruise.
A beginning.
Sarah Yost is a poet and educator based in Louisville, KY. She is currently an MFA candidate at Spalding University and has received support from the Bread Loaf School of English and the Kentucky Foundation for Women. Her poems have been published in Bacopa Literary Review, Kissing Dynamite Poetry Journal, 3Elements Literary Review, Cordella Magazine, and elsewhere. Learn more about her work at sarahyost.net.