Now Reading
AUTOPSY REVEALS LASTING MARRIAGES MOSTLY COMPOSED OF SHARP METAL IN A THEORETICAL VACUUM

AUTOPSY REVEALS LASTING MARRIAGES MOSTLY COMPOSED OF SHARP METAL IN A THEORETICAL VACUUM

AUTOPSY REVEALS LASTING MARRIAGES MOSTLY COMPOSED OF SHARP METAL IN A THEORETICAL VACUUM

by Dylan Krieger

 

 

i am a longitudinal experiment in elopement
          and the results are what you might call
good on paper, as in, they’re still together

i’ve never been arrested, listened in class
          well enough to welcome into my bloodstream
the great canonical misogynists of history

what a setback success is, you have to
          unlearn everything, and then keep it
hanging around your house like an antibody

it’s touch-and-go with me and weddings
          forget red glasses, even with a pile of full-blown roses
up over my head, my mother comes wandering through

sometimes with her two black eyes, the kind
          you might separate over, but not divorce
that’s what i absorbed, looming large above

the lesson planners, about what bad men deserve
          when the window shoppers point and huff
embarrassed not by what he’s done, but by the gall of this girl

to raise her face above the document, to show it off

 

Read our interview Dylan Krieger in this issue here.

Dylan Krieger is writing the apocalypse in real time in south Louisiana. She is the Managing Editor of Fine Print and the author of six collections of poetry: Giving Godhead (Delete, 2017), Dreamland Trash (St. Julian, 2018), No Ledge Left to Love (Ping Pong, 2018), The Mother Wart (Vegetarian Alcoholic, 2019), Metamortuary (Nine Mile, 2020), and Soft-Focus Slaughterhouse (11:11, 2021). Her latest release, a chapbook called Hideous Compass, was released by Underground Books in 2022. Find her here.