For My *Thriends
My dearest ones, I want to tell you
what I saw today just from looking outside at the sky: yes, it was grey, and a mist hovered about the window in shadows of condensation. And yes, a heavy fog had been gathering around my heart
Katherine’s Coffeehouse
Apologies to the Trashmen (a draft)
This one is for the trashmen,
and all the people who have to pick up
before the sun implants itself
into the womb of daytime, disposing
of useless and discarded things through
the harshest nights.
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Dear Mrs. McGreevy (a draft)
Dear Mrs. McGreevy,
I am sorry I was a little scared of you when I knew you were alone,
how afraid I was to kiss your cheek – you see, I could not bear
the way that rude hair on your forgotten chin would puncture
the innocence of my own, and I was so very much afraid
that your mouth had resisted its own skin, taught against the gums,
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On Dreams and Poems
Strange how dreams
and poems work,
how everything mixes
together, and some of
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Because You Wore a Rainbow (a draft)
Because you wore a t-shirt with a rainbow on it, and because your earrings
looked like the ones I wore in college, oblong and shell and dangling
to your lovely thin shoulders, and a smile that invited me in that first
time we met, and because you talked to me about writing
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On Being The Other (a draft)
Last night I dreamt of a girl,
not just any girl, she was eleven
and had long, black, pretty hair
and an innocent pale face with a little nose
and serious lips and a chin that had not seen
as many meals as she needed and her mother
didn’t want her anymore and her father had disappeared.
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Love Song to Men
This is my love song to men.
And men who identify as men.
Not men who pose, snap pictures of you,
then drop you in gutters to drown
in waters they pour from the rooftop.
Doctrine
They called it
The Baltimore Catechism—
every doctrine has one,
but this book had a special creed
for teens: God, remind me
to obey and do what I am told,
remind me in order to be loved,
that first, I must be lovable.
Once, I Saw a Soldier
Once, there,
I saw a soldier,
leaning against a barren tree,
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Help Me Not Be Normal
Help me not be normal.
Help me when I am in formidable first grade,
counting my fingers under my desk because math is hard
and there’s too much talk from inside out and every last word
barges into my brain the way you did my bedroom
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Nightmare in Suburban America
i dreamt last night
i hid in an elevator
molding my back
into angles and steel
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What Betrayal Feels Like
I’ve decided it’s a birdcall,
not the Canada goose
I will be in the life
I live after my next, more
like the mourning dove,
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Heron – a draft
We aren’t much to look at, we poets, unless you look very closely, which most aren’t wont to do. It’s
What They Say about Hands – a draft
They say the hands will do what the heart has felt. Not knowing who they are (might be indigenous wisdom
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Familiar
By Katherine M. Gotthardt
Last night I dreamt again you appeared,
thin and limping after what I could have sworn
was your final parting, last heavy sigh and whimper,
all of us laying hands on your haunches, private room
with wordless music, pet pictures, candles. And as always
Early Onset
What I want to do is stop remembering
the rainy morning you drove 50 miles to my house
to help me find car keys I’d dropped in the trash.
Cure
Do not silence your life. Disregard fears of tonsillitis, laryngitis, infection. Sing. Sing what is, what was, what isn’t. Trill
Ode to a Balloon Let Go in London
It’s what happens when an orb flies freely, escaping the glass of a world glaring with human imperfection, industry, idols,
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