'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.

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.
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.