by Nicole Steinberg
I like to think an oversized floral print
will make me a better person but it would
only confuse and destroy the others. Lady
bear, no one really gets to get the moon.
Like all of us, the tides are faking it,
drowning piles of embossed party invitations
in dismal dishwater. Seeking the ecstatic
pinprick that leads to the most meaningful
bloodletting of our lives. My jaw-drop pores
exude an envious bouquet. I spy the monster
snuffling beneath your chair and I want it
under mine. My stiletto is stuck in this
blood spatter pattern so they wind the crime
scene tape around me like one boss anklet.
Nicole Steinberg is the author of Glass Actress (Furniture Press Books, 2017) and Getting Lucky (Spooky Girlfriend Press, 2013), as well as various chapbooks, most recently Fat Dreams (Barrelhouse, 2018). She is also the editor of a literary anthology, Forgotten Borough: Writers Come to Terms with Queens (SUNY Press, 2011), and her work has been featured or reviewed in the New York Times, Newsweek, Flavorwire, Bitch, and Hyperallergic. She is the 2021–2022 Poet Laureate of Bucks County, Pennsylvania, and she can be found online at nicolesteinberg.net or @nicolebrett.
This poem previously appeared in Ilk.