you need a
temperature of
1800 to turn a
heart to ash
fire needs no
fork at the
feast
mourners are
a collective
memory
under
stood
by my 9th
funeral of
friends who
died of AIDS
I’d like to see
you try telling the
heart it has to leave
we get new feet when
we reincarnate
I’m always
so excited
to see them
aren’t you
what is the word
permanence doing
to your imagination
your property and
things things
things
trade
revolution
for reform
gamble the
sky on a
factory
chimney
climb
steps
to the
burned
down bank
I smelled a
millionaire’s
toilet and knew
exactly what he
ate and was
disgusted
with myself
for knowing
I’m tired of
remembering
and the memoir
I refuse to write is
titled high heels
and turnips
my mother had
true crime shows
in the background
her study in
decimated
tenderness
when you
say art is
a hammer
shaping reality
is it because reality
hammered you
a fin cutting
across the
dinner table in
your direction
it makes me sick how our
shadows overlap when
you hold me can’t you
leave it at home
I tell you the
enemy is in
my head
it comforts
me to hear
you say
you hear
them too
CAConrad‘s latest book is Listen to the Golden Boomerang Return (Wave Books / UK Penguin 2024). They received the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, a PEN award, a Creative Capital grant, a Pew Fellowship, and a Lambda Literary Award. They also exhibit poems as sculpture with recent shows in London, Hamburg, Melbourne, Porto, Santander, and Tucson. CAConrad previously appeared in petrichor one. WEB
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