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KIMBERLY LAMBRIGHT






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.

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