This Fabulous Century II
This circus: in the Forepaugh, bodies shuffle into cooperation. Look
at the ribbon: how it tresses her hair as delicate as a greeting
card sent with raw news. I’m tired of similes for how the world
is so whole—would it be too easy to say we juggle the fruit of our
wombs like seeds on the way to plant? That we
are always missing the cues for how to act replete when
really we are filled with hunger tinted green?
This Fabulous Century III
In every cold sweat
is the heat
of a machine beating its mechanical
hand against
your beast. It asks, turn me on?
awakening you from the dream
that is your own swelter,
your own half-off.
Caroline Chavatel is the author of White Noises (GreenTower Press, 2019), which won The Laurel Review’s 2018 Midwest Chapbook Contest. Her work has appeared in Sixth Finch, AGNI, Poetry Northwest, Gulf Coast, Poetry Northwest, Prairie Schooner,and The Journal, among others. She is editor and co-founder of both Madhouse Press and The Shore and is currently a PhD student at Georgia State University.
Illustration by Aliya Smith.