Kristin Garth: 2 Poems

I Let You Bury Me

I will let you bury me. Pretend it’s just  
a fantasy if I would desiccate
in your backyard.  Small skeleton you trust 
enough to discard.  You designate 
me scripted lines, yours eulogies to dirt 
I swallow after hurts you would tender 
a broken girl like me — someone you wish you weren’t 
able to see so easily — flower-
bed over my head, made-up marigolds,
to hide the dead. I take an afternoon
to exhume, shovel, carefully controlled
to protect orange golden blooms you prune 
to cover me inside an afflicted mind. 
I let you bury me a dozen times.

The Secret Society of Laura Palmers

for Jennifer Lynch, author of The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer

Our fathers make us Lauras — yours with art,
mine with his heart.  We’re their transcriptionists, 
the obscenities of seventeen, hearts 
they halve, mine hidden, yours bidden by Lynch
himself to just “be Laura Palmer.” Though 
you are his own daughter, and 22, 
somehow he knew you would imbue his show 
with orgiastic veracity.  You 
speak ripped page diary to me, small beach 
town girl opened up some nights, spread leg fire, 
deprived books, fingers, flashlights to be a piece 
of demonology who he acquired 
through genealogy to take apart.
Your father only used you for your art.

Kristin Garth is a Pushcart, Best of the Net & Rhysling nominated poet from Pensacola and a sonnet stalker. Her sonnets have stalked magazines like Five: 2: One, Yes, Glass, Luna Luna, Occulum, Drunk Monkeys, and other places. She is the author of eleven books of poetry including Pink Plastic House (Maverick Duck Press), Puritan U (Rhythm & Bones Press) and Candy Cigarette Womanchild Noir (The Hedgehog Poetry Press) and the forthcoming Flutter: Southern Gothic Fever Dream (TwistiT Press, 2020) and Dewy Decimals (Arkay Artists, 2020). Follow her on Twitter and her website.