Poet Island Press

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2 Poems by Sarah Mitchem

POSTED 2007-05-24 IN YOUNG WRITERS POEMS

Sarah Mitchem is a sharp young writer out of Virginia Tech. She is at once careful, strikingly open, and very exact in her work. These poems, arising from her time in Paros, Greece, where she studied writing at Hellenic International Studies in the Arts, allow a very literary, internal view into an acute self-awareness.

THE WATERLINE

At the harbor a little
fishing boat is tied
to the pier.
The rough water and chopping at it.
I want to get in.
Not to lose myself in its rocking motion,
just desiring to write in the boat
and not worry about slipping away.

But I would end up noticing
where the paint is chipped,
what lay at the bottom of the boards,
the colors chosen.
All so that I could transcribe it
faithfully in my journal.
Recording small accuracies and
promising to remember them.
Reciting what’s around me to
avoid what’s in me.

Always in this body
but that I don’t know myself,
don’t let my heart rule.
I’m always brought back
to segments of myself.
The way my motions
make people record me.
The Greek men reeling me in by my wrists
so that I struggle to slip onto side streets.
To dissolve there, and dissolve here.

I did not get in the boat.
I do not write how salted wood feels.
I did what I do with you.
I imagine the boat.
I record the habits I would perform.
I fail to reconcile.

LET IT ROLL

I walk along
the harbor view.
White washed walls,
the promise of black on the horizon.
I wonder how different it would be
if you were here.
Not in a romantic or missing way.
Not like that.
I question the blank space in me
trying to understand what your absence brings.
I imagine what it would be like,
the conversations I would open or stifle.
My observations when I’m with you,
or without you. All is a catalog
point of access into me.
Entering, re-entering, pushing back,
breaking through,
moving on.

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