POETRY

“Poetry is language at its most distilled and most powerful.”
—Rita Dove
Good Driver

Lights on the dashboard spell out
“You still can’t kiss me”

There is an alternative universe

Ghosts for hire, whispers in her mouth,
cysts to feel, the symmetry of a gift.

Existential

four-thirty a.m.

Clotheslines

Ma wrings
a wet world
of colors

An Interview with Dylan Krieger

Dylan Krieger’s poetry is unflinching, grotesque, and beautiful. Her work tackles trauma, wrestles authority, and is a decadent sonic feast.

All In

I don’t
know why
I’m in the garden
kneeling on dirt

Fallout Shelter

I imagined a cascade of slow death for all / that mattered…

Aging Punks

Every so often, they add a tattoo
in honor of some long-forgotten love.

Drowning in sky

I have observed, the theorist
I am

Landscape with Ash

You are strange, my mother said, dwelling on the past.

Observer of the Patient

Her brown eyes,
how a fig
considers itself.

oh Manifesto

The collective
failure
of ethical standards

Soft Porn and Cuban Pine

It recommended
soft porn, as gentle prodding and petting parent
to parent might calm and soothe the kid.

“Artifact,” as Translated from Gluberhöff’s Lexicon

Any still figure at mid-late evening, when the long shadows make even crumbs appear arranged like furniture.

woman at bar
After She Told Me You Pushed Her Down the Stairs

Empty vessels
make the most sound, I think,
as you rip the fairy lights off the handrail.

Dis Place Ment

People have always coped with flooding, and they learned to cope with death.

beach
On Undressing a Color / On Undressing a Girl

I imagine that undressing a color, though, would be so much like peeling a memory away from the grey and the white matter of your brain.

love poem with dead leaves & color

I would always rather be happy than
dignified. Rather held than held
in awe.

Vase

The storm passes without snow.
The car waits loyally in the back lot.

Willpower

Live the rest of your life
from one worst case to another.