'Observation Room' and 'Sagitarius (x)', by Alicia Turner
Observation Room
I’ve been watching you drink from empty cups.
“And how are you doing?” I want to say that I am not doing. I want
to say that I am existing; instead, I just exist. Like things just happen.
I exist the way you remember to breathe – out of habit.
Out of habit, I am writing a lot more. I love both running from it and
making it. I love that it reminds me of a different way to bleed, to
put the weapon down, to be the weapon.
Wrong answers only: My heart is made of rock candy and the
smallness of strangers. I’ve had to chew my way through both of
them. Is that wrong?
I write for young girls who lost their parents but found a pen. Who
learned early in their bones to release. Who learned early that when
bones crack they’re learning how to make space. Who learned early
that the body is a text. For the girls who, instead, introduce their
partner to their paranoia, introduce themselves as “cursed,” and
easily manipulate themselves into believing that they aren’t living
through loss but loss is living through them.
I write to denounce generational curses. I write in curse words like
“Fuck” and eat breakfast for dinner. And eat my words more than I
should. But at least I remember to eat, right?
Let’s write a poem where you try to get over this and you fail.
Let’s write a poem that can catch its own breath.
The poem is hungry for your name drops and it is starving.
Speak through the poem the way water answers to thirst,
and while you’re at it,
tell it that you’re not a pessimist,
just like to drink.
Sagittarius (x)
Today, I practiced becoming the archer,
bent back the bow and swore I could feel
the arrow puncture the target,
even, and especially when, I missed.
Once, I fell in love with a Sagittarius,
which is to say
I fell into the friction of the bow,
suspended in its gravity. Its liminal space.
If you’d ask me, I’d tell you that he was my Achilles heel,
a simple & tired metaphor for my weakness, vulnerability,
or other things that cut like a weapon.
Missing the “X” on the archery target is called an almost.
The effect that occurs as an arrow is being released,
an archer’s paradox.
There is a reason why Sagittarius is the only sign with a weapon.
Always armed.
Always reaching back
to accelerate forward.
As Greek Mythology goes,
Achilles was a warrior who was shot in the heel with an arrow.
Once, I almost took an arrow through the heart.
X
Targeted myself – missed, a little off the mark.
X
And still, it is painful to retrieve it.
X
And it is painful to leave it.
I wonder if our ashes will mix before the bow breaks,
before tension teaches us that we are not learned healers,
that we buried ourselves.
Alicia Turner holds an MA in English and is a grant writer & storyteller. She can be found writing confessional, conversational poetry in an over-priced apartment somewhere in WV. Her work is featured or forthcoming in Four Lines (4lines), CTD's ‘Pen-2-Paper’ project, Voicemail Poems, FreezeRay Poetry, Drunk Monkeys, Luna Luna, Defunkt Magazine, époque press, The Daily Drunk, ExPat Press, Rejection Letters Press, Screen Door Review, J Journal Literary Magazine, Sledgehammer Lit, Taint Taint Taint Magazine, Cartridge Lit., Space City Underground, among others. To fund writing endeavors and sweet tea, see: cash.app/$parttimepoetproblems
Photography by @dreamwood.studio