Poetry by Sara Femenella

    Nicolas Raymond CC




Paterfamilias


Of not knowing the difference between real harm and the illusion of harm, 
just like you I pretend you are not sick. Father of the second cocktail. 

Father of Mahler and Dylan, where every bit of my womanhood comes
from what I wanted you to see when you saw me, call me

fantasy, phantasmagory, father of my vices. We’re both so good
at ignoring what is right in front of us that we cannot separate 

our ghosts from our haunting. Father of perfectly parallel lines. 
Father awake at all hours. Every time I think I’ve escaped you 

the littlest daughter inside me drags out her fear to lay 
it at the feet of your fury. Father my misery wants to be the same

as your misery. You keep your sickness hidden with your Catholic 
guilt and your Sunday stubble. Father of St. Erasmus patron

of sailors and labor pains. Father I want to tell you every time it hurts.
You keep your sickness tucked neatly inside your misery, a hurt

inside a hurt, a ghost inside a haunting. My misery is a good daughter
too, hurting just how your misery taught it. Father of twin ghosts.

A doubled love. An inherited haunting. Father our ghosts 
are looking for someone new to haunt. Father when my son

watches me in silence to see if I am angry, when my rage
unfurls at his mistakes, it’s your voice exploding from me. 

And after, when I sing him the songs you sang me, when I laugh 
with your laugh at his joke, it’s your apology winning both of us over again.




​
Elegy in an Ordinary Apocalypse


Our hands do as they are bid, freedom
               is what you do with what has been done to you

the freeway stretches through quick-sands
               of crawl and glimmer, our hands on the wheel

we are on our way home, past our detritus 
               smolder and tinder, our hands, our quarter century 

barter in horror and bathos we’re bored 
               with this already, this daily commute of our hands 

segue nonplussed the telegenic deaths across our maps 
               hanged by their martyr-laurels and dangling over the shores 

of them-not-us grieving technologically, our hands 
               stroking the news cycle lassoed by our road rage 

the setting sun on each windshield like a grand piano 
               in an empty ballroom, once we demanded 

a god for this, for our hands in repose, our hands so gentle 
               gathering us to rest at the end of each day 

blessing what is already dead, blessing what we have  
               done to ourselves and so soon

​



Sara Femenella's poems have been published or are forthcoming in The North American Review, Palette Poetry, Pleiades, The Journal, The New Orleans Review, The Saint Ann’s Review, Denver Quarterly, Salamander, and Seventh Wave, among others. Her manuscript, Elegies for One Small Future, was a semi-finalist for Autumn House Press' Poetry Prize, a finalist for Write Bloody Publishing’s Jack McCarthy Book Prize and a finalist for The Waywiser Press Anthony Hecht Poetry Prize. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and son.