kate polak

A Late Night Scroll

On punishing days, when my skin is so raw
my bones might hatch, I know I live where
a woman thousands of miles away can elegize

her dead blue lobster, and my wildered chest
is a dense and darkening. The cat grasping
a single noodle to make his kibble a meal. Tease.

The riot she paints around her eyes. Drafts
to be emptied. Victorian dresses and beards. Some
fuss on the intercoastal. Aquamayne. All the world

and time. I don’t want to be loved like nothing
has come before or can hence. I want the Crunchwrap
Supreme. You’ve had them before, and again,

but the one you have now is always the best
you ever had, and demands a certain dignity:
what it is to give yourself over, knowing well

it won’t be the only thing you eat. Hump day.
The things we tell ourselves to make it over. Make overs
always work, make whatever aspect into the same face,

an endless slew curdling like selfies from that
one angle that’s right. That’s right. The deer antlers
stained with reflective paint. The woman who leaves

her house to battered ones with pets. Sad reasoning
behind. The nothing I can’t touch reaches out
and brushes its fingers along my cheek. When watching

you leave, I say (softly) “please don’t leave.” You
don’t hear me, or pretend not to hear. There is
glitter. There is an animal (rustling). Qui vive.