by Mary Sfaelos Klein
A deer in the road appears pregnant but it's the opposite:
She’s bloated with death. Life is funny this way —
How “paraphernalia” looks and sounds like a dirty word
when it’s really just the seashells you brought home from the beach,
wrapped up in your towel
like jewels in a thief’s knapsack.
The world is a profoundly filthy place, I think,
going to meet my siblings for coffee
where we tell stories about work and killing mice;
two things we’ve all got in common.
There are no more jobs.
We might as well give up
and start wiring electricity from this place to that place,
or breeding hazelnuts in a lab.
I used to like a boy who worked in a lab
and sent me pictures of newborn rats,
All pink and doomed
beneath the heating lamp.
When I’m gone I’ll miss my windows.
How they keep everything
contained, and glow
like salt lamps.
Like Nativity.
****
Mary Sfaelos Klein got fired from writing clickbait last summer and it's all been uphill from there. She lives in Cincinnati where she makes music and edits a biannual literary zine. Her poetry has appeared in Bruiser.