Unsent Postcard
I own too many heirloom timepieces like the broken grandfather clock, it never strikes the hour properly, it lags a minute then longer so by mid- summer 9 a.m. it might be any hour. It chimes the same for hours gained or lost. I can never grasp Daylight Savings, the flying back, the sailing forward, my night too soon always.
A thousand years ago
Lou Reed wasn’t yet Lou Reed, he was just The Velvet Underground and I wanted to look like Nico, although I was a sadly healthy weight and hated the smell of cigarettes. My brother left me the white album with the giant banana. Both our bedrooms had the same built-in furniture; but mine, for some reason I could never grasp, was icier than a cave. My brother ordered his books alphabetically, and his collection of D.C. comics by date; everything he owned was immaculate. Under my brother’s desk, crouched between the wood, I cupped my hands over my face —Heroin blaring as loud as I could stand it. Its words pierced my skin. In that house, I never wept; I was allowed no moods. The death of me, I was singing, the death of me.
No mercy
words found in Great Expectations, Charles Dickens
I was ravaging the house
lying in ambush behind the gate.
I was stalking
about the misty yellow rooms.
Growing tall, she said.
I should return
the garden-mold, a garden chair,
those grave-clothes.
I was quiet in a corner.
Growing tall, she said.
I pushed the same gate open—
I saw the fight,
the candlesticks,
the old mercenaries.
Have no mercy, she said
I should return.
We make these journeys.
We play cards over and over
and over and again,
I know nothing about time.
Carla Sarett’s latest poetry chapbook, Any Excuse for a Party, is out from Bainbridge Island Press. She has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best of Net, Best American Essays; and Best Microfictions. Carla serves as Contributing Editor for New Verse Review and has a PhD from University of Pennsylvania. She is currently based in San Francisco.
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January House Literary Journal 
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