Bernadette Geyer

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Parable of Sleep

They had forgotten how—
blamed the moon, low blood sugar,
the wrong pillow, the heat,
the chill, the rain, the wind.
They blamed the nightingales
and banished their songs,
silenced the owls and scattered
the bones and feathers from their pellets
around the perimeter of their beds
to ward off the wakefulness,
night like a slow drip of morphine
that brought no relief.
They lamed the cats
to prevent their nocturnal prowling,
and lamps and tapers were extinguished
all over the world, scapegoated,
pitched into pitch because light
had become something to loathe.
Yet some learned to find comfort
in the wakefulness and slowed
their desires to match the expanded
time in which to love and explore
each other’s hypersensitized skins.
Those who donned veils to keep
out any ill-fated glimpses
of full moons and sunrises eventually
tarred their eyes closed and yet
sleep would not come,
while still others attained peace
only in the final sleep they
brought upon themselves—
their bodies still and dreamless.

Parable of the Lie

Only when you’ve gotten used to its presence
do you realize you can’t remember
when the lie first appeared in your life.

The lie tells you not to worry, smiles
through the telephone receiver, says
We just need to discuss this in person.

The lie is that you are totally fine. It hides
itself in the shadows
of the body’s half-truths and genomes.

The lie becomes a filter
through which you watch the video
of your life spool past in Technicolor.

Even the clouds take the shape of the lie anymore, it seems.

The lie wants to distinguish itself from the other lies,
so it gussies itself up, knocks back a snakebite,
and goes out on the town.

The hungry lie circles the lake of you, one eye
on the fish that thrashes within your chest.

The lie whispers in your ear all the reasons why
optimism is the real enemy here
and you should not believe the truth.

The lie is that everything is wrong and nothing
will ever be the same again.

As the last girl in the horror film that is your life,
you cannot shake the fear even after
you have put the lie to rest in no uncertain terms.

One lie told in a forest of lies is afforded the semblance of truth.

The lie comforts you when the fever-dream wakes
you at night. It envelops your shivering form with its warmth.
The lie fits you like a glove on a hand.

You tell yourself the lie when you are bored, sing it
like a lullaby, feed it and nurture it, worried that
one day, it will grow into a truth and you will fly away.

I waited at the gallery

I waited at the gallery for C___ to arrive, and because it was raining, I went inside and began to study the works in the main room, my attention immediately seized by a large photograph of a disheveled bed, and the longer I gazed at this scene, the more I saw, letting my eyes travel through the room within the confines of the frame, feeling a bit guilty about trespassing on the intimacy of someone else’s life, taking in the rumpled sheets and pillow, like a spy, a voyeur, the world beyond the closed double-paned windows indistinct as if forgotten. What has happened here that should not have? I bring all my baggage with me into that room, which has hardly space for me let alone all that I imagine about it. The artist would be disappointed, I think, in my musings. I am always misinterpreting things. I see human frailty everywhere, the embodiment of its fears and anxieties writ large or small, in video or acrylic, on canvas or carved from stone. The truth is there is no one truth. The room in the photo being what each viewer perceives it to be, welcoming us in, making space for us and all the effects that tether us to our selves.

Bernadette Geyer is the author of the poetry collections What Haunts Me (2025) and The Scabbard of Her Throat (2013). She served as editor of My Cruel Invention: A Contemporary Poetry Anthology, published by Meerkat Press (2015). Her writings have appeared in Bennington Review, Barrow Street, Gargoyle, Poetry Ireland Review, Westerly, and elsewhere. www.bernadettegeyer.com

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