Free
Free, the price tags shiny with white-out, it’s free,
I go shopping with Dodie, the red shiny bag at Kate Spade
on Grant, let’s go into Agnes B and see how much the
shirt cost that Chris and Brian bought me
Save, long time ago I thought you could save me
I pictured a dreamy house like Elizabeth
Robinson’s, with a sunken tub, but instead I settle
for Squalid Manor, Frank O’Hara’s dull apartment
“Build three more stately mansions, O my soul,”
I hear a voice that rings, it might be Kylie Minogue
the sexiest tomboy beanpole on the planet,
that which I walked in size eight shoes, for to
Buy the ones we saw in the window, May sun
splattering them with pixels, we saw ourselves
the two of us, and I said, Ah, what’s the matter with me,
I have nothing to look forward to
Ship of pearl, which poets feign,
Sail the unshadowed main—
The venturous bark that flings, and suddenly
the pavement tears itself apart, a lift appears
Man comes up through the sidewalk
in front of Stella McCartney store in New York
a little bit down from Joe and Charlie’s
To have seen so much, to have missed so much!
Why, next time we will do better, till our
bleeding feet spurt compassion in our hearts—
in our next life when, perhaps, we will return
as a shell on the beach and a little pink kitten,
Lucy.
From Action Kylie (In Girum Imus Nocte et Consumimur Igni, 2008). Copyright © 2008 by Kevin Killian. Published in Poem-a-Day on October 25, 2020, by the Academy of American Poets.
“Free” was first published in Action Kylie (In Girum Imus Nocte et Consumimur Igni, 2008).