crazy to think in the midst of a pentecostal church service
i’m the sane one
forever exiled from speaking in tongues
under the sanctuary staircase
as if immune to brainwash
don’t i wish
there were that simple an antidote
to needing a daddy
wrapped up in a metaphysic
hit me in the head and
call it laying on of hands
turn what is sad about
a false flag
into what is said aloud
as the house lights dim down
i could plead
don’t play the fool
for the theatrical
but we all bat
stick-on lashes at something
if a cardboard box
isn’t a race car it’s a spaceship
if it’s not my ex’s
dick it’s some porn star’s
i want to debase me
in the car after confession i ask
why we believe at all
and everyone just makes noises
in their throats like i’m
a swarm of inhaled insects
because the rockface
might cry out, my mother offers
but the screech of a construction site
reminds us rocks cry all the time
in a nation-state this industrialized
so i quiet down and listen
to my sister humming hymns
out the window, too deep
in daydream to weigh in on the riddle
because hope is a hospital
her thinned wings seem to scream
defibrillating our queer breastbones
all over the backseat
mainlining all that canaanite slave talk
taking an x-ray of a breeze
living a long time is such a death sentencethe future is hard to watchall the dials are set to the wrong o’clockhappy new year from your favorite funereal klutzmy idea of date night an invitation tocome over and apply sting-y astringentsto my kneecaps, still slugging the same whiskeythat got me reeling in the first placeearly to tell you this, i’m well aware, buti like that your face is becoming more familiarin the morning it’s still storming wheremy wedding party pulled overin the upper peninsula to scrutinizea snow-covered statuaryconcrete apocalypse of pop culturecreepy is what we called it in the momentbut only because we fear the falloutthe don’t cross your eyes or they’ll stick like thatfunny what we do and don’tfuss over the river takingsome drinks worth spillingothers pined for on par withspontaneous combustionthe explosiveness with whichi’m disgusted with myselffor loving everything about to leavefor the belief that the reason people closecloset doors at night is that otherwisethe monsters would never stop watching them sleep
at this point in the manuscript, i start licking my fingers
hungry for a well hung ending. sometimes, yes, history
repeats itself, but so many careless windows lowered
will never open again. for example, this long-distance
handstand. oyster pearl thrown over your shoulder out of
superstition, you tell me my nihilism doesn’t stand to reason
but on this matter i don’t defer to you, professor mystic
my best friend is a liquid more reliable than my ability to be
a person and goddammit i try to be starry-eyed over facetime
a more censored version of scully, but no one can keep
photoshopping their abortion forever. when you roll
your eyes at my trauma mantra, you become just like
everyone else in the field office: chain-smoking knowitall
of laughing least resistance. do we only ever kiss
to suck that bitter taste out of our back teeth? bleak, maybe
but it’s working. and i tell you to come sit next to me
above the train tracks where i killed a stranger
completely sober on a thursday and you say
see what happened while you were busy looking down?
the blackness took a cigarette break and the fireflies came out
Dylan Krieger is an automatic meaning generator in south Louisiana, where she lives with a feline reincarnation of Catherine the Great and sunlights as a trade mag editor. She is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame and Louisiana State University, where she won the Robert Penn Warren Award and co-directed the annual Delta Mouth Literary Festival two years in a row. Her debut poetry collection, Giving Godhead (Delete Press, 2017), was dubbed “the best collection of poetry to appear in English in 2017” by the New York Times Book Review. She is also the author of dreamland trash (Saint Julian Press, 2018) and No Ledge Left to Love (Ping Pong Free Press, forthcoming), which won the Henry Miller Memorial Library book contest in 2017. Find her at www.dylankrieger.com.
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