Circuit My mother claims to have the power to recharge dead batteries by touch. She holds them gently for half an hour and they begin to work again. She can’t fully control the power. Sometimes, the batteries don’t charge. Sometimes, the charge only lasts a brief time. But often, they’re as good as new. She […]
Many Worlds Hypothesis I wouldn’t know, but what if / every time I order a ___________________/ another […]
The Other Things We Swallow A is for the Americanbeast who devoured my mother.C is for the coyotes that wanderdesert and mountain, looking to lick the bones of abandoned chuco women.E is for el, el hombre, el macho, que se […]
kat kluegel (she/they) is a poet from Minneapolis, Minnesota who is interested in the less rational aspects of being human. She loves the color red, riding the bus, an earnest exclamation point, and the word crabwise. She is working on a book-length lyric essay exploring the intersection of eros and grief. This is her first […]
The Marriage is Survived by Both a Husband and a Wife Once I wrote a list to steel my mind What I should do if you kill yourselfHid the list at K’s house, preparing for the truth avalanching toward ustext my boss / tell our kids / fly in a friend /schedule more therapy / […]
Strangers at a Bar in Chicago on a dance floora man walks up to me says i remind himof everything about his sonhe pauses a bit when i demanda doorway to his memory—he was just like you he says againwe were so close yet distantin the neon colored light of the clubbodies stack in pairs […]
Twister The air was dense and daytime TV dragged itself around in circles. I wanted to go to the pool but hated going with Renee. She always taught me how to swim by taking me out to the deep end and swimming away from me as fast as she could. Renee was grounded for skipping […]
TKWLI I press play in the middle of the iPhone voice recording taken on that swampy summer afternoon, and that scene, emblazoned in my brain, re-enacts itself. I was twenty-three years old and feeling far too young. My sweaty thighs suctioned to the peeling black pleather couch. Swaddled in blankets, my dad’s skeletal frame occupied […]
I plant runner beans on the eighth floor It strikes me this is the kind of kindnessyou would do to someone else’s body.One month later, lung-shaped leaves have green-stretched and orange-scattershot themselves acrossthe balcony, panting with coiled pleasurein thirty degrees, carbon dioxide- drunk. Meanwhile, I have questions I don’t ask.Will we sink or swim. That’s […]
Waves It was the principal of my high school, or the assistant principal, a teacher, the chaplain, one of them who came to my class and retrieved me. As I rose from my desk, he or she said to bring my bag along, and it was at that moment, or maybe the one before it, […]
