Dylan Krieger

textbook anomaly  

going home hurts my throat now
glass half dead cat, photos too 
exposed to know what happened

someone upstairs insists
there is another term for praying 
the rosary (impossible to recall 

impossible to rule out) 
and the rest of the night is solid 
goose chase into catechism 

smashing translucence in case it’s faking
tip of the tongue lost in laundry 
as if some jeans pocket 

jingles the sacred heart of the joke
folded into filmy erasure, but in the morning
we admit there’s no such language  

half-remembered from a field guide to 
the american southwest, what matters is
we knew we were mistaken all along

we checked, in fact: the sinkhole 
in the dictionary isn’t big enough 
for church words to drop down

what matters is it doesn’t matter
the hunt for nothing sounds fun
with our dinky little flashlights

flipping the property blind dark
to blind white, wedged between revelations 
blinked into heavy mascara 

all around us, vinca invisibly attempts
photosynthesis on a 9-volt battery
wheels get dizzy with their own reinvention

coming home is like that
complex machinery rubbed pink
drunk again under the floorboards 

old blood clots saved under the sink
heart-shaped boxes full of baby teeth
i pinch their soft spots, bone by bone

nine cavities whispered into cellophane
call it the carnage of the nursery 
bartering glass beads for edible wings

there, another name for praying the rosary 
new search results for all our meathooks 
strung up like christmas in the land of disbelief 


monsters like me

some children blow whole nightlights hiding from monsters like me

midwest goodbyes start early so you can hear the end before you’re dead

a decades-long tornado siren, special Lord of the Flies edition of Monopoly

in which i am the pig’s head, and then a single dollar bill stolen over and over again

and then the surface of reality burns the game into its scrotum

and that’s how economies are created, baby: by the loose scabs

dangling from our bodies, more sick fruit, watchful vultures waving hi

from the top floor, the skyline looks like a staticky tv, obscured tapeworm

what if demolition is best witnessed from no distance whatsoever?

no more dilemma of the spectator, just snowfalls of sheetrock

they’d find me curled up under the rubble of your bedroom closet 

where no one in their right mind ever believed you that i lived

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Dylan Krieger is a fly on the floodwaters of south Louisiana. She is the Managing Editor of Fine Print and the author of eight poetry books/chaps: Giving Godhead (Delete, 2017), Dreamland Trash (St. Julian, 2018), No Ledge Left to Love (Ping Pong, 2018), The Mother Wart (Vegetarian Alcoholic, 2019), Metamortuary (Nine Mile, 2020), Soft-Focus Slaughterhouse (11:11, 2021), Hideous Compass (Underground Books, 2022) and Predators Welcome (Limit Zero, forthcoming). Find her at DylanKrieger.com.