by Kristina Andersson Bicher
Girl squanders her fish sticks
beats her gums against unjust
monoliths
She
is a gifted bootlicker
her bootlicking is prolific— Father LOOK
our Girl is a
phenom! Let us toast to her Very Promising Future
her parents feed her
an enormous chain
she burps gold and they are stung with glee
when she spits tin, she’s cold-
shouldered
Girl flips her feathers everywhere
(to herself: I will join the Spoonbill Revolution— I will be
Lead Tanager)
Dear, cautions Father, you cannot eat air— Oh Daddy,
you’re dead, why don’t you remember?
Doll, says Mother, let us scrub
the sour from your soul please Mother-may-you
then Girl is a very BAD butterfly
Her kleptocracy hits the skids
she is shook
by cops
till her tinsel falls loose
[purloined necklace dime store ring]
o haven’t we… haven’t we her parents clock
their heads together
Kristina Andersson Bicher’s work has appeared in Ploughshares, Brooklyn Rail, Harvard Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Plume, Denver Quarterly, Narrative, The Atlantic, and others. She is author of the poetry collection She-Giant in the Land of Here-We-Go-Again (MadHat Press, 2020) and translator of Swedish poet Marie Lundquist’s I Walk Around Gathering Up My Garden for the Night (Bitter Oleander Press, 2020). She holds an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College.