{"id":6774,"date":"2019-12-11T19:26:07","date_gmt":"2019-12-11T19:26:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/?p=6774"},"modified":"2019-12-29T19:27:53","modified_gmt":"2019-12-29T19:27:53","slug":"two-poems-lauren-sartor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/?p=6774","title":{"rendered":"TWO POEMS – Lauren Sartor"},"content":{"rendered":"

1. Using This Booklet<\/strong>
\n 
\n\u201cThis booklet does not offer a plan for recovery from alcoholism\u201d (Living Sober, Intro)
\n 
\nThere is no chronology in addiction.
\nIt is always where it is. Love too
\ncan be like that; young love, especially.
\nThis booklet is not a plan, it is more
\nlike a body with bruises; the poems
\nconnect the contusions in an attempt
\nto remember what was erased by force.
\nThis booklet is full of accidents
\nwith pages like carrier pigeons –
\nin hopes to reach out to the dead,
\nto coerce the grave to grow roots.
\n <\/p>\n

\n

 
\nFending Off Loneliness<\/strong>
\n 
\n\u201cWhen we have only ourselves to talk to, the conversation gets kind of circular\u201d (Living Sober, Section 14)
\n 
\nThere\u2019s always
\na clich\u00e9 to cling to.
\nHair of dog and keep scratching.
\nTie one on and get loose.
\nOff the wagon and hit your head.
\nI put a record on the player;
\nthe grooves deepen.
\nI crack one open.
\nThe singing comes first –
\nthat I understand.
\nThe reading aloud
\nis reasonable enough.
\nBut this talking to walls?
\nI don\u2019t know when it happened,
\nbut it\u2019s happened.
\nEach night my feet paces the distance
\nfrom Binghamton to Syracuse.
\nThe floor\u2019s wood is testimony
\nof this delirium, of this trek, of my tongue
\nmoving like a train full of philosophers.
\nI\u2019ve answered questions put forth by phantoms,
\nreminisced at length about my childhood to the face in the window,
\ndrank until I became incoherent.
\nI\u2019ve sat on the rocking chair to make it nod,
\nstrained my voice at the curtains to make them clap.
\nEach night is a compulsion for company,
\nan argument to be put to sleep.
\n 
\n 
\nLauren Sartor has an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College. Her work has appeared in publications, such as Black Fox Literary Review, Broad! Magazine, Calyx Journal, Literary Juice, Easy Street, The Former People’s Journal<\/em> and others. Her work takes an earnest look at the conflicted, and often misrepresented, facets of ordinary livelihood. She is currently a Ph.D. candidate at SUNY Binghamton.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

1. Using This Booklet   \u201cThis booklet does not offer a plan for recovery from alcoholism\u201d (Living Sober, Intro)   There is no chronology in addiction. It is always where it is. Love too can be like that; young love, especially. This booklet is not a plan, it is more like a body with bruises; [&hellip<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6787,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[140,4],"tags":[336],"class_list":["post-6774","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-haiku","category-poetry","tag-blue-woman-by-barry-scanlon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6774","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6774"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6774\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6790,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6774\/revisions\/6790"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6787"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6774"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6774"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6774"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}