When people ask me how I am, I never tell them
I have collections of thimbles, rooks, thread, eraser dust,
and stones. My father always kept a handgun in every drawer
of his house. Patriotism is learning you were conceived
on the fourth of July, in the shower. I am afraid of trapdoors,
the dark, mutton, the chasm of language. I’m also, ambidextrous, obligation,
fracture, spar, do not resuscitate. Aren’t all the poems we write
a catalog of grievances? When I panic, I imagine a harbor; the boats
leave and return. When I was eighteen my mother strangled
me in an empty room of an empty house. When I lived
in California, I never made it to the sequoias. The only
vocabulary I accumulate is different ways to talk about weather.
“Wood, Wind, No Tuba,” is the perfect title for a painting
of that size. Egon Schiele knew exactly how to make a body
out of thin air. Homer believed humans were given tears
as compensation for death. I already know the you in my poems,
even though you do not. And if luck should find my tiny hands
in yours; crutch, mooring, suture, ache. I love you, but I don’t tell
you enough, and leave and return and leave.
and stones. My father always kept a handgun in every drawer
of his house. Patriotism is learning you were conceived
on the fourth of July, in the shower. I am afraid of trapdoors,
the dark, mutton, the chasm of language. I’m also, ambidextrous, obligation,
fracture, spar, do not resuscitate. Aren’t all the poems we write
a catalog of grievances? When I panic, I imagine a harbor; the boats
leave and return. When I was eighteen my mother strangled
me in an empty room of an empty house. When I lived
in California, I never made it to the sequoias. The only
vocabulary I accumulate is different ways to talk about weather.
“Wood, Wind, No Tuba,” is the perfect title for a painting
of that size. Egon Schiele knew exactly how to make a body
out of thin air. Homer believed humans were given tears
as compensation for death. I already know the you in my poems,
even though you do not. And if luck should find my tiny hands
in yours; crutch, mooring, suture, ache. I love you, but I don’t tell
you enough, and leave and return and leave.
March / April 2023
Kate Sweeney is pursuing an MFA at Bennington College. She has poems most recently appearing or forthcoming from Northwest Review, Muzzle Magazine, Birdcoat Quarterly & other places. Kate has a chapbook, The Oranges Will Still Grow Without Us [Ethel 2022]. She lives in New York.
Art: Aiyana Masla. Grey Day. Watercolor and pencil