HARVEST CAKE
Will I feel universal
when I give birth? No, I’ll feel
afraid.
Stay beside me as I misbehave.
Grab at me as I misbehave.
I submit to privacy
after two decades of decking my halls.
I’ll make art but won’t sell it. I’ll make art as the snow falls.
I’m about to buy a rocking chair.
Get the chowder and get in here.
All year I’ve been trying to dislodge form.
You’re just a system, a situation, you’re not what I mean.
The author pretending that they don’t know what is in their book.
Carrots, walnuts, apples, raisins. Fuck
character, I want to talk about
significant moral burdens, tell the truth about your life.
We left our children in the future under the electric blanket.
The thermal quality of late autumn. The corduroy leaves.
I brought the harvest cake to the lighthouse, to the rocks.
You were crushed by mid-life. By my-life.
HOMESTEAD
Late September, my lace maw on your ample couch.
In four concurrent journals I document
how I stay.
Apartment as notebook.
The blonde wallpaper.
My youth was force, I protected
myself. I see protection
when you look at me.
The pie from the shop on Fulton, the belonging
in the lack. These nights aren’t domestic.
The articles I print out
are soft. “No one
does what’s good for them.”
KIMBERLY LAMBRIGHT is the author of Ultra-Cabin, winner of the 42 Miles Press Poetry Award. Her work appears in OAR, Phoebe, Columbia Poetry Review, ZYZZYVA, Bone Bouquet, The Burnside Review, and elsewhere. She lives in Brooklyn.