FOUR POEMS by KATY HAAS
hey siri play binaural beats playlist on spotify
- binaural beats for writing sympathy cards
- binaural beats for forgiving your father
- binaural beats for a streak of too-warm days at the end of February
- binaural beats for having an existential crisis
while you drive to work and it’s sunny outside so you think
you should be thinking about anything else but there’s something
about the stretch of shadows or a hawk alighting from a leaning telephone pole
that keeps dragging you back to the question:
how did i get here and where else is there for me to possibly go from here?
- binaural beats for scheduling an emergency therapy session
- binaural beats as a ringback tone purchased in 2008 for $3.99
- binaural beats for remembering the mortality of everyone
you sent an “i love you” text to on New Year’s Eve
- binaural beats for remembering the back of your ex-lover’s head
as they performed oral on you for the last time
- binaural beats for finding an excuse to be where you shouldn’t be,
where you told yourself you’d never be again,
because you told yourself you’re doing better now
and the new, better version of you doesn’t treat yourself
or others so carelessly anymore,
even though you still want to,
even though you want them to know
you still could.
the only time i can’t think of a lie is when i’m playing two truths and a lie
i’m a bad person but a good listener.
i’m a lamb lying in the lilies.
i am eating the lilies even though they are beautiful
and now no one else can enjoy them.
i’m not feeling bad about it.
i’m smoking your cigarettes and i’m smoking your weed
and i’m using your girlfriend’s toothbrush
from the cup in your bathroom and still
i am not feeling bad about it.
i sometimes wear turtlenecks and other times
i feel like i might be dying.
i’m a whole chest of drawers and all the drawers are empty.
i’m a disappointment.
i am mostly composed of stomach aches, headaches, and eczema.
i am sick in the cool way and in the stomach ache/headache/eczema way and
i am hot in the temperature way and occasionally in the sexy way.
i am restless and i’m gnawing my leg free from a trap.
i am the one who set the trap.
i am outside your house.
i am wondering what i’m doing here.
i am itching to do evil, drawing devil horns on all my selfies.
i am selfish but
i am listening,
i promise.
if Home is where the heart is
Home is in line at the 7-11 down the road buying 2/$5 sugar-free Red Bulls and outside in the parking lot a dog is sitting in the driver’s seat of a Honda Civic staring straight ahead while Shania Twain calls the girls to attention on the radio, and Home takes a photo of the dog and texts it to me with the caption, “he is a very good driver.”
summer scab
the concrete’s crawling with clover mites,
TV static rash on the curb.
my elbows itch and i’m hungry
for harming. my hair dripping wet
with humidity, suck the mulberry
stains from my fingers, swell
beneath the scab of that summer.
my blood is a living beast.
my skin crawls inside of itself.
and my mouth is a wound
oozing outward. i think to myself:
the broken glass in the gutters
tastes just like all the loving
i’ve ever done and i’m gluttonous.
my inner arms open outward
like loving you.
i chew glass until i’m sick.
i step on the mites
until the sidewalk stops moving.
i am falling apart
between the cracks in the pavement.
i am scattering like the sun.
Katy Haas is a queer non-binary writer, artist, and Furby enthusiast from Bay City. Their work has been in JAKE, HAD, and elsewhere. Their debut chapbook “the algorithm knows i never stopped loving you" (Bullshit Lit) is rumored to be about their break-up with their true love (a white noise machine) although the rumors are probably, ultimately untrue. Find them on Twitter (@katyydidnt) & Insta (@mouthshroom).