Three Poems – Kate Monica

 

8 ACTS OF LOVE & FEAR

Scene 1: Skateboard basement, diluting one of your friends
into losing a fight with her boyfriend & in the end Does It Really Matter
who ruins the party, the last reliable law of thermodynamics being
someone will

Scene 2: The lead singer twisting in the neon
is very beautiful; I will order you infinite whiskey sours
if you will reconcile my latest internal onslaught for the next 4 hours
or distract me—yeah let’s go with that

Scene 3: They sound sort of like Modest Mouse after edibles
‘I thought if I came all the way out here I would be happy’
I think my last honest addiction is to repeating my mistakes in the hopes
insanity, in this vein, is more fun

Scene 4: Photograph flash of your mother’s face falling

Scene 5: ‘You have to get over the fact that you’re getting older.’
‘No, I don’t. I just realized yesterday
I don’t have to do anything.’

Scene 6: And now back to the hospital, Vinny taking a selfie of the arm IV, me grinning because it is so relieving waking up anywhere
still drunk

Scene 7: If this plane goes down I am happy
‘Rick and Morty’ was on—it gives me hope
after the crash & fire & eventual artifacts
we will wake up in a kinder, more bizarre universe
where everything makes less and more sense

Scene 8: But it doesn’t, and now the unconscionable task
of approaching uncertain
I don’t know, everything 

Elegy For A Blackout

no—it was crazy. nothing? you don’t remember
anything? you don’t remember kissing jenny? you don’t
remember her boyfriend storming out, car starting, 
him drunk inside? you don’t remember lying in the street?
you don’t remember knocking over the salsa? you don’t
remember eating the streetlight? you don’t remember
corey crying at the bottom of the well? you don’t remember
laughing at him? you don’t remember crawling 
up the basement stairs, into a church, into a child? 
you don’t remember collapsing on the roof 
at the sight of the moon?