by Courtney Kalmbach
emily dickinson would you place a tea towel on your head in the middle of a forest would you
sing to an apple snail sliding across your boot would the apple snail write a pink script of apple
snail eggs on your shoe would you slough the billet-doux bubbling amuck or would you let
another hour hatch meaning you’re curiouser if porcupines can go bald let the apple snail slip
away toward other novel establishments trot home with a premonition that will overcome you
take off your boots & change into your detective dress your detective dress being a nightgown
sleep like a mink in the day then wake to the sound of an egg’s roll off the kitchen counter
ponder the egg’s squiggly membrane for poison or pickle wander into the living room to see
snails & soon-to-be-snails goop stacked like dirty dishes to you the snails sob: emily our
rhododenron to you the snails cry: decide decide for whom you are a corset for
whom are you a cane for whom you will sabotage for whom you will embrace
feel your hands then hear your hands fan into leaves the apple snails are dew & you are their
glossed grass their cherry pie pulled thin thin as elbows at the slaughter of sweetness
Courtney Kalmbach (she/her) is a queer midwestern poet and creator of Poet’s Gramarye. She received her MA in Creative Writing from Miami University and an MFA in Poetry at The University of Alabama. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Poet Lore, Plainsongs, and Red Ogre Review.