Mouth-Off (III) by Sonya Vatomsky | Really System: Issue Seven

Mouth-Off (III)

Sonya Vatomsky

To bring yourself back from the dead you need flour, to start.
Rather a lot of it, and tallow candles,
with fat from the butcher. Mention my name — I loved him once,
but there's a reason you don't hear ever-afters
about butchers. Avoid lingering,
chitchat. Avoid eye-contact. Avoid the fine red meats,
for now.
Flour, milk, butter, sugar, eggs, salt,
yeast. Wait 2 hours.
Rise.
Push down, let rise one more hour.
Let it catch up to you after sixty soft minutes,
let it walk behind you like a frightening thing in the dark,
let it breathe you in and fill your thin skin out,
let it end and begin you completely until, the final minute,
the final, final minute,
fearing stillbirth,
still life with two apples,
a pear:
let it be standard дрожжевое тесто,
turning aureate in the oven.
A gold ring, a yellow liferaft.

Sonya Vatomsky is a Moscow-born, Seattle-raised feminist poet and essayist whose work appears in No Tokens, VIDA, Hermeneutic Chaos, Bone Bouquet, and elsewhere. She edits and reviews poetry at Fruita Pulp & her chapbook MY HEART IN ASPIC is part of Porkbelly Press' 2015 line-up. Find her online at sonyavatomsky.tumblr.com and @coolniceghost.

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