"You write in second person because you don’t know who that girl is. You call her
Juliet because she is dead. You call her Juliet because right before she died you
saw a blood-red tree outside of your apartment and you knew it was her, throat
sliced open into the sky. You call her Juliet because her father was a man, because
her father was a man who once shook her violently, because her father did not like
to think of her loving other men, because her father was a man who thought she
was something that belonged, because her father thought she belonged elsewhere,
because her father used to call her his princess until she started bleeding like a
queen."
Juliet because she is dead. You call her Juliet because right before she died you
saw a blood-red tree outside of your apartment and you knew it was her, throat
sliced open into the sky. You call her Juliet because her father was a man, because
her father was a man who once shook her violently, because her father did not like
to think of her loving other men, because her father was a man who thought she
was something that belonged, because her father thought she belonged elsewhere,
because her father used to call her his princess until she started bleeding like a
queen."
Juliet II
by Sarah Xerta
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Sarah Xerta is author of Juliet I (H_NGM_N Books), available as a free e-chap, and, her debut full-length collection, Nothing To Do With Me (University of Hell Press).
Juliet II continues the powerful series of its title character as she reflects upon her life’s journey with unflinching, lyrical sincerity.
12/04/15 UPDATE
"Prologue" & "Untitled (pg 23)" have been nominated for 2015's Pushcart Prize! |
Dig Sarah's Performance EXCERPT FROM THEIR N!P CHAP(!):
Praise For Juliet II
"Reading Juliet (II) is like getting set on fire. It's burning and painful, savage and beautiful, and the words singe themselves white hot into your brain. Sarah Xerta is a poet who clearly writes with the purest of motivations--because she has to, because there's simply no other way to make sense of what it means to be alive in this world."
-Juliet Escoria, Black Cloud (Civil Coping Mechanisms)
“It would feel wrong to call this chapbook beautiful, but it would be a disservice to deny the way she manipulates gorgeous language to describe something so ugly. Sarah lets the subject of the chapbook, Juliet, take over. The reader is weaving through the intricacies of the kind of mess you are forced to make sense of on your own. We can’t leave the mess, it is ours now. The kind of mess where you can’t be too long with the clean up. It is on a slanted surface. There is a time limit, it is going drip.”
–Katie Burke, Probably Crying Review
“Unfortunately it does not end so peacefully. Those who desire possession refuse to admit wrongdoing. Even when it would be the only human thing they could do, those who desire possession want to always be in control, to never admit that their actions were deplorable, that they destroy people. If those who desire possession admitted wrongdoing then they would feel remorse and would be force to stop their aggression, their preying on the innocent. A person dies and a person is born again, out of the hurt ready to start anew.
“...This powerful continuation to 2014’s JULIET (I) is written in second person since “you don’t know who that girl is. You call her Juliet because she is dead,” & this has the effect of both exposing the profound disembodiment that accompanies trauma and sublimating the autobiographical to clear a space in which Juliet becomes a sort of everywoman, or everyperson, of survival. Stunning, unforgettable, and nauseatingly real, Sarah Xerta’s words make the kind of poems you’d gather up in your arms to hold, if physical intimacy were still an option.”
–Sonya Vatomsky, MY HEART IN ASPIC (Porkbelly Press)
| Juliet II by Sarah Xerta |
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