Sara Jane Trattner

Sara Jane Trattner is a poet, painter, and pop-punk aficionado living in Aurora, Ohio. Her work has been featured in Bop Dead City, Pudding Magazine, and The Mantle. Her chapbooks, “In Service” and “Widow Crane” were published by 11th Hour Press in 2019 and 2022 respectively. She thanks you for taking the time to read her work and hopes you are being kind to yourself.

Easy read of the poems in the images above:

Bitters

The bars around here only serve your bath water,

Toast the milk of porcelain and the taper

Of good thigh sweating souvenir shadow.

I miss the way your lime would meet my lemon dancing,

Like twisting might single helix us, bound

And rightly. I don’t know

Where to put the things I bought thinking, one day,

You’d come home to praise them, but capacity

Feels like a shared tongue when ours aren’t off

Finding new mouths to clutter. I worship at that altar,

Stay busy, find plush places where my body

Looks soft like yours and learn to unhate it.

I still hope you are well— that when you think of me,

You remember the sound of two laughs playing

The middle, cut for time. I love you curtly,

Which is to say, I hope your cat is still alive,

But also, I hope she breaks the skin on occasion,

When you get bogged down making cocktails

With someone who deserves your time

And the right bitters. Good kitty.

Reasons to Bring a Gun to a Knife Fight

(CW: mentions of guns and knives)

doctor upper hand plays the shell game with knives.

shadow needler, sharps box of naked faith

and tiny wounds for healing. forgive me. 

i was not instructed which side 

of gown to leave open, so here, my skin displayed

in pale, unseemly glory. here, a butterfly

pinned to cork with powdered wings

whose sulfur looks the other way when i am changing. 

i am told that white coat syndrome is a symptom

or untreated guilt, which must explain

my inability to ask for what I’m owed,

or the musket in my trunk. call me old fashioned.

i like it when a knife stews in borrowed light

to keep its sheath unburdened by medical marvel,

smoke in search of mirrors finding body

in the way of body. doctor in the way of body.

doctor and the trust fall of good will manners,

the tricky fold of hospital corners, malpractice.

i apologize. i didn’t mean to say that part out loud.