Katherine's Coffeehouse

favoring neither leg, nor whip, nor the hushof cajole (control)simply a horse whinny to make a country better than it is,kinderthan it thought it could bethat’s allthank youfor your timeKatherine Mercurio Gotthardt, copyright July 23, 2024, all rights reserved

I make myself go slowly to the sink.

This poem is not for poets.

Still with eyes closed, wrapped up in blankets

It begins with, “Don’t you believe in company loyalty?”

We clutch a bit now for sleep through the night, choose sharper tipped verbs, phrases, questions of status quo, but are handed cliches

It’s complicated, really, it began so long ago, while bent over a bin of gourmet ice cream, scooping it out for a customer: “Don’t you believe in company loyalty?” And I had to tell him, no. “I am not loyal to groups,” I said. “I am loyal to people.”

he asks me why poetry, especially before coffee

It flies across my bathroom floor, sliver of a creature,

I am here to remind you: Nothing you made was for us.