Two Flutter Sonnets from Kristin Garth

Ballerina Ghost

 

Attempt to keep your eyelids closed beside

your sister, faux repose, until you feel a pull

of limbs, entreating your return to him. Outside

again, inside a blink, beneath the full

still moon, a haughty pink — how I have lost

my mind,, you think. Though it is something else

you seek — someone, in fact, whose path you crossed

this night in darkness, pines, bees and moths. Smell

of nectar as you draw close upon

your tiptoes, ballerina ghost

to him, who looms above a trembling fawn —

another, face replaced with bloom, engrossed,

looks on. Upright, a start, affright, in bed,

you will believe it was a dream instead….

 

 

Pas De Deer

 

…. of something that could never be — a boy

that blossoms, like a bee, each beasts his lips

embrace, petals he proffers for a face. Mind cloyed

with thoughts of his unblinking eyes eclipsed

by these nightmarish lies. Escape, alone,

investigate, by morning light, a dream

you contemplate in between stepping stones

and longleaf pines until a bounding seems

to overtake you, body, mind. Revolve

to see an antlered beast, the nightmare deer,

you observed male lips draw near, resolved

to gore, or perchance just imbue with fear

an enemy — as clearly you are deemed.

You cannot think that last night was a dream.

 

 

Author’s Note:

 

Ballerina Ghost and Pas de Deer are sonnets from my

forthcoming collection Flutter: Southern Gothic Fever

Dream (TwistiT Press 2020).. Flutter is a hybrid full-length

Poetry collection of sonnets with prose annotations

telling the story of Sylvia Dandridge, a teenage girl in 1883

dying of scarlet fever. Sylvia’s world is limited by her feverish

nature but expansive in her blooming mind and populated

even with romance (a boyish bee demon) and offspring

she will never have (the lemon tree foundling twins).

 

Ballerina Ghost is the story of Fiona, one of the

imaginary foundlings who decides to take off on her first

solo adventure into a midnight woods. When she returned

to bed she dreamed she returned a second time to have

more experiences with the boy. Unfortunately, in her

dream, she sees him performing what appears to be a dark

act upon some deer. In Pas De Deer, Fiona is faced with an

even darker realization when the deer world seems to have

deemed her an enemy — maybe it was not a dream. Maybe

this boy is not what he seemed.