Alice in the Rabbit’s House
I’ll call you Alice, unborn child
rumbling in my sleep, product
of a distant summer’s urge. Now I am
stuffed to the gills, a house puffed up
by someone’s mischievous lips.
It all happened so fast– the closing trees,
the shrinking sky, the wrong place
for an arm, though it is an arm all right,
waving and grappling under my many
folds of skin. Tell me, Alice,
what piece of furniture are you
who finds it easier to turn
upside-down, your feet dangling in thin air,
head poised for the nearest way out?
The world is no different here. Truth is
we all have to eat and everywhere
there’s guesswork: broccoli grows to bushes
just shorn, pebbles turn to cake
and for every week a different hunger–
huge, undeniable, innocently born.
Sarah Gorham is a poet, essayist, and publisher who resides in Prospect, Kentucky. She is the author of four collections of poetry: Bad Daughter (2011), The Cure (2003), The Tension Zone(1996), and Don’t Go Back to Sleep (1989).
