if who
some nights
you may experience
thought’s diamond
drop squeezed
from an enraged
zero. strained
& so so
bitterly wrought
some nights
labour, some nights
grieve, some nights
exorcise somnolence
o who come middle age
can enjoy their white noise machine
their plastic anti-bruxism mouthpiece
their apnea apparatus & allow
their subconscious to work
its internalized heresies
its backward dance
its sandpaper erasures that smooth it to sleep
as night drips
pandemic & toil
& the schoolchildren
dream of sugar’s
refined fluorescence
speed into tomorrow’s
slapstick
hyped by lucky charms
hallucinate
locker-lined corridors
that twist into a rich dad
poor dad
pedagogy
& their anemic allowance
offers only
a leadership mentality
fueled by squats &
plant-based proteins
by plyometrics
only
feral invective
to arise
& grind – but tonight
that rare
ecstatic hour between
the internet’s thirst traps &
the pillow’s
wicked blow
is –
o
who
can afford to release
their unrealized life
into a freakish
disambiguating
microtonal cry
Copyright © 2024 by Kaie Kellough. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on June 10, 2024, by the Academy of American Poets.
“This poem is a short section from within a much larger poem. It has been a long time since I’ve written a brief, self-contained lyric. This piece serves a particular function within the larger poem from which it’s drawn, and that is to avoid dwelling within itself, and instead to carry its momentum into what is yet to come. It is less about the poem as a fully realized work, and more about the poem as direction, as possibility, as opening into.”
—Kaie Kellough
Kaie Kellough
