THREE POEMS by KRISTIN LUEKE
posting
i am not a hero, just a child of the universe
per my agreement with the church from online.
i have cultivated & maintained several strongly
held positions on where to place vases. never
near a door. there’s all this danger forever, yes,
also happy hours, horses. is it worse than it was?
am i bleeding? here i have a rectangle & it’s always
in my hand. i paid one thousand dollars so it tells me
if i’m credit-worthy. it also shows me genocide.
it also shows me dancing. i wake up some days
already weeping, waiting for the world
to get good, get real. every year we love
a different bug. i think the katydid comes next.
the youths will be insufferable / goddammit so will i.
top gun maverick made a billion literal u.s. dollars & i guess i have some questions
it's the achievement, i'm told—the feat
of it. planes, missiles, mustache, american
muscle, plenty of money & never enough.
we've never seen a sky like this. we manifest
such density. heroes don't need healing
they need louder guns. i need better drugs
&, god help me, more butter.
& another thing is
you will live & go on living. do you want to know why? fucks’s sake,
it’s the unburnt candles. pistachios too, six bundles of pine twined
up with a prayer regina gave you. that dummy big bunch of dahlias
jenny brought by in august cause you once wrote a poem about fuschia.
remember? everything that’s happened. swimming tits out, moss mad,
hot spring in the mountain, two dogs breathing nearby, one’s your dead
best friend, wanted nothing but what you could offer—proximity, party,
dried lung of lamb never far from my palms. my world for a toothless mouth.
you will survive & become in the time that it takes you the thing you love
best: the earth. you will live to hear the horrible news, again & again,
the tuesday that will suck forever & the other tuesday too. you will make
two thousand more questionable choices. you will kill another calathea.
sorry. you will take two sudafed with your tea & then you will sort out
the future. you’ll nap. you will grieve like a feral orchid. nothing quite right
& remarkable, living. you could name a dozen more animals. be a river.
repent. learn how to draw a magnificent horse. take back your body
from every cruel thing. never once have a child you didn’t want. you will
wear your hair down. to hell with it all. you will go where i go.
& i’m staying.
Kristin Lueke (she/her) lives in northern New Mexico. She didn’t always now she does. Her work’s in Sixth Finch, Wildness, HAD, Maudlin House, Frozen Sea, and some other places. She writes at theanimaleats.com.