Kathryn Hummel

If bei mir bist du shoen
means that you’re great

then kar sang ahap
is hazier
surréaliste

honestly
can’t remember a time
when things were pretty
or felt good

do you
mind

do you mind if things
stay the same

or if the painful days
leave
a different sting?

Don’t call
your water man
until you’re ready
for a
new can

why don’t we take better care of ourselves

we could—almost—have made it
through the poison and scars
edged by non-present hearts into ours
their absence like bruising

why isn’t comfort our ultimate addiction

and I mean to the grey-bearded fellow,
the warm dustless hearth—
not the coyotes proselytizing
between a room of one’s own
and a room of one’s making

can’t we just stop doing things

cease the terrible scratching
the desperate propositions
made by lovely people
what has been hard for me
will, actually, be easy for y’all

will we still be there to bear witness

after I plead I prepare for bed
dirty feet and the impact of roses
in placid bloom, a weight coming to rest
like tarnished coins on dead eyes

When wanting is mutually impossible, or just another
impasse of power, we draw conclusions like straws.
Yes it can be a gamble, or is it as natural as moonlight:
a source that flares or throws shade
precisely in the surrealist film we call reality?
Precisely where we are is inevitably where we should be.
There is no such thing as decency but we may not yet
fall into the indecent category. Truth is different: a timepass
to be captured with a camera flipped to the outside.

from other people’s partners
             from other people’s children
                        from other people’s dogs

i.
i feel no pity for those
who come up to my place
anticipating sex
& get a poem
instead

ii.
the human race
seems to have run
gosh darn out
of wonder
so opt
for procreation
an infant to feed
& its awe to feed upon

iii.
writer’s block happens
maybe when there’s
nothing to articulate
maybe because the reality
is just too big to funnel
down the neck of a creative outlet

Surgery Prep

The ache in the soul
must always be greater
than in the body,,,
if not, conspire
to make it so.

Whatever it is that you want
it’s unlikely to be found at the door
between the second and third stair—
the blinking button sticks
at a floor you might claim
to have loved more, elevated—

Promise lives there—
not of homely meals, bright lighting
or a full-length settee to couch
every body as firmly as they demand

but of plenty rich and strange
the menu only limited to your
own budget and bag size—
decorated, occasionally sanitised
with a nest that bears my name
and a suitable chair

a bend in the atmosphere so cunning
you have no way of guessing
its next turn—all you have to do
is take or discard

towel, kettle, candle
for your numb senses—
the invocation of any random
godlike thing to protect you
during your stay

linen—clean
pages fanned out into a yawn
and temperate ceiling fan speeds

Come calling
make the journey
and you’ll never be denied—

anything you need
is not everything on offer
but there is strength in the welcome—
the hostess mimicry began
at a young age—
a skeleton still remains

and enough space to dream
you could do anything—
even beyond
the rich, the strange

Wind down like a music box
until your melody plays
in retrograde, until your
boundaries can be traced—

the journey back is nothing
compared to the comfort
on your inside and the rate,
it’s always fair—

(what it offered—what it gave
how it was used, used up
and betrayed)

put your hand to the door
knock again—