the german sisters by Sarah Crewe

Sarah Crewe is a working class feminist psychogeographical poet. Her first collection floss is published by Aquifer Press. Her poem “the german sisters” was written for a screening of Margarethe von Trotta’s film as part of The Spirit of Liverpool: Reclaiming Women’s Histories Through Film.

start    start now   start with the ways in which
you resemble yr sister    concrete
bipeds    chestnut   a leftist persuasion
aversion to motherhood    a shared
sickness    the rehabilitation
of the german psyche    the guilt trips
corrode    an anti propaganda
this is yr past    this is who you are
a strange pair of sisters    congealed
coffee tops    jumper swaps    circular
panopticon    the all seeing    all
knowing    intuitive bond between
the headstands    headstrong but different shapes
pliable    morphing capacity
short and scratchy    flies around a corpse
around yr sister    triangular
the whites of yr eyes    the whites of the
shroud    wrapped tight    a sailor’s knot    a noose
incontrovertible    determined
to prove otherwise    maybe this is
what we do with our sisters   concoct
a version    of time    of self   of her
a dionysian    daddy’s girl
a master of intrigue and heartstrings
classmate at the bottom of the cross
oh won’t you write about yr sister?
the core of all hurt    crux of all fault
distorted    image    distorted   footage
stripped back     back in box    deine schwester
incredible bone structure    the face
of an angel    you’ll never see a
face like that again
    here is a crash
test dummy    of my sister    hold the
front page    typeset    begin now   begin

Leave a Reply