Dream of reincarnation
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Mon petit chou, when the sun stuck its fingers
through the toothy skyline, oxygen lassoed your lungs back into orbit & up you sat gasping. Such anger! Nothing prepared me. I, the soft bewilderment; the cringe, the spit. The way night flaked off you in scales, leaving crystalline trails on the pitted sidewalks. The subway’s pungent waft escaped our feet like fleeing souls. Ma chérie, I longed to pet you softly as a grandmother. I ached to braid forgiveness into your auburn balayage. Regardez! I’ve studied how to do it without pulling tender scalp. Without designing wreckage. Instead, the day got fat and we were cabbages. Not cute, but mostly whole and unalarmed, our roughage slightly curdled by the day’s remorseless glare. Our fabulousness shriveled like his penis, after. Quel dommage, our cigarettes burned longer than our feelings, foliage convulsed around a flimsy purple middle, all our brittle layers more bitter than they first appeared. |
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KT Herr is a queer poet, singer-songwriter, and cheesemonger. She is co-host of Electric Poetry on 88.1 FM WYCE, board secretary for west Michigan literary nonprofit Write616, and poetry editor for The 3288 Review. Her poems have appeared in Pilgrimage Magazine, The 3288 Review, and Grand Rapids Grassroots: Anthology of Activism. She is a 2017 Pushcart Prize nominee, and a finalist for the 2018 Retort United Slam Team. An MFA candidate at Sarah Lawrence College beginning fall 2018, she currently lives in Grand Rapids with her astonishingly well-mannered cat, Cecil.
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