Drawers, Slips, and Slits, by Roula Maria Dib

The Anthropomorphic Cabinet, by Salvador Dali (Spain) 1936

Drawers, Slips, and Slits

“Keep them shut,” they (or rather, I) say. 
For it is best that mercury is kept at bay,
in a chest of buried treasures—of pleasures.
Winding down from crown to sacral bone,
sacred in double-helix mimesis, is a grander form
of pregnant drawers with little slips,
like a cascading waterfall, ending at the hips.
In them are tickets to Narnia, Neverland, and Nevermind,
To fantasies of the future and abandoned pasts behind.
In another is a muffled moan, a frozen bark in the icy wilderness 
of neglected dreams and haggardly hopes that still press--
So, confess?

​Roula Maria Dib

Dr. Roula-Maria Dib has a PhD from the University of Leeds in the UK. She is an Assistant Professor of English, the founder and editor-in-chief of Indelible, at the American University in Dubai. She is also a creative writer and literary researcher. Her research interests lie at the interstices of psychoanalysis, mythology, modernism, and gender studies, which involve frequent forays into Jungian psychology, interdisciplinary works on the literary and visual arts, and the bridge between modernist literature and science.  Her poems, essays, and articles have appeared in numerous journals. She has authored a book, Jungian Metaphor in Modernist Literature (Routledge, 2020). Her hobbies include reading, traveling, photography, writing, and cooking.