BY DYLAN KRIEGER
the median
we couldn’t hold our breaths
the entire tunnel
so you told me your wish:
to be a different person
someone satiable
who knows how best to
scratch the itch of consciousness
well, little wide-eyed perfect puppy
i don’t know either
but i will dig my fingers
with utmost loving attention
into the skin behind your ears
for a million years
feed you bloodthirsty berries
from the lip of my paltry fountain
whatever doesn’t deserve you
i know full well, but i’ve worked hard
flown all over a dying empire
to tell you, to show you
the tragedy isn’t lost on me
i’m enlisting your balled spit
your half-lifted eyelid in orgasm
to write an alternate ending
pass a frantic notebook
back and forth laughing about
the private capacity for violence
in our passing glances over the median
eternally uncrossed between us
steering wheel shaking in both fists
like any moment we might
work up the worst courage
shatter the straight line
and kiss a cursed gear shift
into oncoming headlights
stay shelved
so many comrades in recovery, and here i am still mainlining dreams
as if across a crowded room, an angel might articulate my thought stream worm for worm
face-off too lush to get lost in the figures: ventriloquized incest, tin mood turned to snowmelt
when i hear you use apophatic correctly in a sentence, who you are is hard to miss
at the moment of corruption, the dial tone in your esophagus lasts forever
and all the germ-addled wounds are holy--that’s what the howling never tells you
explicitly, but it’s apparent whole forestfuls of woodpeckers get it, and we’re no different
thank the chaos for deciding to warm itself on our little spinning bonfire of lead
thank the hospital parking lot for reminding us childhood was canceled
from the start and yet it still feels fresh, mazel tov to our mutual collapse
i’ve been cosmically betrothed to one unmooring or another for so long wishing it were yours
i’ve been nine kinds of anemone, the plastic sixer rings skinning their predators
i’ve been the cliffs where anyone ignoring the weather’s warnings disappeared into the drift
but none of that would impress you, the usual terrors stay shelved
pages fingered to the point of crumble, and go ahead--i am helpless
to whatever feathers you next decide to pluck and spread
Dylan Krieger is writing the apocalypse in real time in south Louisiana. She earned her BA in English and philosophy from the University of Notre Dame and her MFA in creative writing from Louisiana State University, where she won the Robert Penn Warren Award in 2015. Her debut poetry collection, Giving Godhead (Delete Press, 2017), was dubbed "the best collection of poetry to appear in English in 2017" by the New York Times Book Review. She is also the author of Dreamland Trash (Saint 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, 2020). Find her at www.dylankrieger.com.