Fable

The woman, fronting a fable, wondered–
Am I the cause, or the effect?
No answer forthcoming, she considered splitting,
before she turned her back on herself
and left.

#14 from Untitled Film Poems
Image By Cindy Sherman
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Booksmart

Perhaps he was right,

and God was a peeping Tom—

Fiction turned her on.

#13 from Untitled Film Poems

Image by Cindy Sherman

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Baggage Claim

Was it fate, a fire sale,
history?
The longest-running soap serial
was drawing to a close,
if only the damned latch
hadn’t been broken,
if only escape plans
could be executed
without the claim
of baggage.

#12 from Untitled Film Poems
Image by Cindy Sherman
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What Dreams May Come

Her dreams
possessed the symmetry
of a sorrow
undisclosed
to the dreamer
who borrowed her body
to model alleged reality.

#11 from Untitled Film Poems
Image by Cindy Sherman

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Checklist

If someone

would have told her

it would be like giving birth

to a checklist of domestic

servitude

and falsely fresh

produce

on a numbingly repeatable basis,

she might have seriously pursued

her childhood dream

of running away with the circus

and giving her body

ala contortion

to a wildly applauding

yet hands-off audience.

#10 from Untitled Film Poems

Image by Cindy Sherman

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Perspective

From where she sat,

the house seemed to be

swaddled in sheer gauze,

and flickering, like a light

that was about to go out.

She considered adjusting her view

to dispel what must be an illusion,

but there was something terribly satisfying

about the polarizing effects

of her, here,

and them, there,

and what would happen, if

#9 from Untitled Film Poems

Image by Cindy Sherman

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Somewhere

You don’t know
where the nights go,
what apparitions
with monstrous appetites
do the swallowing.
It is a mystery,
soundless, unsigned.
But what remained
in the whorish glare
of daytime
were all the undigested bits,
the flesh creeping
with prickly beads
of sun
like scabs baked
in magma
and hazy unremembered
regret.

#8 from Untitled Film Poems
Image by Cindy Sherman
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Cocktail Mixer

It wasn’t her house,

her nightgown, her anything.

And the old woman

in the sun hat

snoring like a phlegmatic breeze—

Who was she?

Existential hangovers

are the worst,

she thought to herself,

as she tried to piece together

hazy fragments

that she hoped would clarify

and amount to a life

resembling her own.

#7 from Untitled Film Poems

Image by Cindy Sherman

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As Above

Consider the script–
Girl, unmade by past trauma,
sees angels, and cedes.

#6 from Untitled Film Poems
Image by Cindy Sherman
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Missive

Letter from Wonderland–
Dear Miss So-and-So,
Your husband injured himself
chasing a young girl
in fuzzy pink rabbit ears
down a dark narrow hole.
Do not expect him home
any time soon.
Yours Truly,
A Secret Admirer.
 
#5 from Untitled Film Poems
Image by Cindy Sherman 
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