'Used Car Dealership' & 'Dream Journal Excerpt 1': Two Poems by Tori Eberle

USED CAR DEALERSHIP

How the inflatable gods

of pain and memory

writhe and twist within me.

They s t r e t c h my limbs to their will.

Loosened skin and love lost to the wind and sky–someday I will snap.

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DREAM JOURNAL EXCERPT 1

Two snakes.

Wild/escaped/chased/under surveillance

they had somehow

ended up in a Bed-Stuy apartment building (not my building?).

This old(er) man

was teaching me how to handle them

to hold them

when the snakes

got loose

from my grasp.

They ended up locked inside a bathroom, I can’t remember how or who locked them in.

I opened the door.

Their shapes were frozen--silhouettes almost scorched onto the floor in neon colors,

along with a statue of a woman made

out of snakeskin.

A large wheel

etched with symbols,

rested in the center of the floor, situated near the snakely shapes and statue.

The wheel began to sink slowly

into the floor

as I entered the

increasingly

small room.

A man (who had once been a snake)

reached for me.

I woke up when we kissed.

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Tori Eberle is a writer based out of Brooklyn, NY. She lives with her dog, cat, and a few wild-found animal skulls. Her work focuses on trauma and emotional violence, as it relates to love, loss, and the fragility of the human body. You can find her lurking the dark corners of Instagram and Twitter @eberlexm and more about her at www.torieberle.com/poetry.