Sara Sutter

I Tried to Make You Fall in Love with My Avatar

It's painful, how he watches

her mouth. His pineapple slice

eyes. Everyone gathers

at the stream, stars bright

against the sky. Idol, ideal, idle, so

lovely,— she needs it out 

of her, as though pushing out is 

feeling. Gray balcony

where communist Yugoslavia 

tobacco factory workers lived. 

Romantic/authoritarian

narrative—idea of lineage, but mostly

sorrow burrowed in her 

hips. Pink fish

growing fewer in the brown

river. A rosy film. Gives her 

love to the Great Internet 

Hunt, its infinite interference 

patterns and potential 

mates. Endings make

for such glorious suffering. 

So it's like that. Can't decide

when it flies or hatches, all 

dividends of a circle, #9. Theory 

that it should be 

easy, but all theories feel difficult, like

knowing someone = harder 

than kissing them. When we 

start at once, minutes fall 

into new shadows.

Sara Sutter is a poet and professor in Portland, Oregon.