Five Poems by Kristin Lueke
origin story
my mother was not
the moon. not comet.
not sun nor planet held
in place. not wanted,
not necessarily, not without
want of her own, without
grief, without trouble
too heavy to share.
my mother was
not a myth & yet.
when i number stars
i say her name.
brain help / love, belly
you scrape another bowl to save you
from grieving your mind, memories
as it is, kept feral on garbage.
i tell you listen. no more advil.
you tell anyone else what a starfish is
or isn’t, how nine russian hikers died
or didn’t, where the ocean’s most
mysterious, why you won’t stand
for horror but can’t resist a spoiler—
here’s one. give me rest or a reason
to turn me against us. you?
cannot stand not knowing.
i stand no chance alone.
wild-eyed, as good as loved
it’s absurd & i know it. i look at the face of the brussels griffon
& say to you here is what’s heavenly to me. this, i could look at
forever. my infinite jest, an entertainment without end but one—undoing by devotion. sue me into silence / don’t. i know i am
difficult to take seriously, despite how serious i seem begging you
to believe anything i say at all. why else would i bother? i would die
for this dog & to know you know me well enough by now to know
even i don’t know where my laughter ends & despair begins, more
importantly, i don’t care, so long as there’s something living, small
& wild-eyed, just around the corner. comically self-important.
we find a way to love what we don’t understand.
real peaches
nothing is alone, it’s my job to convince you.
i say to you six years ago i coaxed a sprig of sage
into a pile of old trash, rich with shit & bones,
& today i ate six leaves, browned, buttered,
silkened into soup made from squash my emmy
brought me, cooing at their smallness, perfect,
how she bought them from the basically-a-boy
called scotty who sells whatever grows
on a disappearing farm in Indiana.
we’d met him in august, hollering & hoping,
for our attention, he gave us little stonefruits—
tiny, twisted, bruised & godly—the sweetest
i have eaten.he said that’s how real peaches taste.
remember where they came from.
nectarine season
i wake up in a startling turn of events this season
of mornings before you. i didn’t know you
unbelittleable, unterrified & terrifying.
no one thing stays one way. i imagine you young
stumbling, speeding thoughtless toward self-
destruction into another day’s unending appetite,
eating shit & bleeding knees. you were younger once
& so was i. i had a back as strong as anything.
i could bear carelessness, a night on the sofa,
making a point. i could pass a day unthinking.
now there are years & i count them with you,
each one less an era. i try to recall i need
more than i did, take you in hand like a stone fruit
i stole by almost accident once at five am, jetlagged,
uncertain if i should say sorry for the year i spent
quiet. i didn’t want what i had to ask for.
you ask me to be patient. i paint an old bookshelf
& remember my posture, the way blossoms become
one last thing. how some nights now you don’t sleep
even if your mind is good. even still.
there’s a bowl in the kitchen i always keep full.
Kristin Lueke is a Chicana poet and author of the chapbook (in)different math (Dancing Girl Press, 2013). Her work has been nominated for Best New Poets, Best of the Net and a Pushcart, and published in Sixth Finch, Wildness, Frozen Sea, Maudlin House, HAD, and elsewhere. She writes and reads poems at theanimaleats.com.
