The Sylvia Plath Forum

Poems inspired by Sylvia Plath

The Other Side

A silent gasp ripples the vacant square,
A heartbeats, (it's) out of time.
Nerve endings spark and conect, and a train shoots up.
Seconds slip out un-noticed, but oxygen is still diffused.
A pane of glass divides all. My eye is no doorway.

A doorway to a sick grey pulse, with shadows,
Which shiver. In apprehension it can almost watch the
cobwebs cluster.
Air laps; crawls down hours. A spider crawls from a
Webbed curtain. Curtains shroad a window, a porthole to-,
But it blurs. Breath has soiled it's view.

A closed eye to a locked door, keys lost to the see,
to be caressed by a fishy fin.
My back slumps, crouched in a question. A
green conclusion stirs. Those misshapen answers float
through my abyss, there was no call for a bridge.

I need a bridge. The I that is left, is but two right eyes.
The black reflection swallows such company.
Air can be thick, the doorway is thicker.
A woodworm festers in a labyrinth of bony tissue,
my bones lack juice.

My, as was I, and the two eerie eyes were shackled.
Black wiggled and cackled. The door staggered against
the worm. It parted, cracking the glass inside.
A shard glittered as it licked my spleen.
Glitter was not pure gold.
It was, as was I, deathly flawed.

Alexandra Sarll
Tatsfield, UK
Tuesday, June 19, 2001


The Sylvia Plath Forum is administered by Elaine Connell, author of Sylvia Plath: Killing The Angel In The House.

Web Design by Pennine Pens.