Kai-Lily Karpman
I Wanted to Be a Poet Not a Mother
in my dreams i lie sideways on the flat sand of a cold desert and the emptied spaces in me
turn into velvet desert stars. night slithers on its belly from my silkened hands, and
everything looks dark, dark, dark, like the space between my knees.
my breasts become ravines that fill with water after rain, and the jackals and rabbits all
come to drink and keep clean, but the jackals grow hungry and the rabbits are maimed.
thickened with blood, the water flows within me all the same.
i almost wake up when i see a gaping baby mouth open, wet, and moving like the whole
sea
or under. with breath like a jackal’s she calls out Mother?
The Life Cycle of Cruelty
The other night, I dreamt I was maimed by him, again. This time, stabbed in the stomach. How hard it has been to not love him. He said: Don’t eat meat in front of me. I hate to see your teeth.
O
Crack open my sternum. Witness the clenching and unclenching of my heart. Rabid and quick as a dog off the leash.
O
In high school, I was reprimanded for “my womanly wiles” by a woman with short hair. I swear to God. I looked at her hands decorated with fake gold rings and fingers fragile as carrots.
I looked at my huge paws, the strong edge of my jaw, the smooth curve of my hips, and I knew I’d grow up to be a mean fucking bitch.
O
I always thought Silence of the Lambs was a love story. Had I been served a human kidney I would have said thank you and devoured it like a plum. If bothered by the screaming of the lambs, I would have sculpted a silence from their dead limbs. Piles of red and white pushed into the open, blue mouth of sky.
O
Meat on ice. Nights of oysters and talks of money and dick. Feeling too old to be wrong anymore. I recall the first man I fucked after my ex. I walked into his kitchen, naked, cold, dark blue, humming like a rising wave in a storm. I returned with a blizzard in my mouth and my filthy sock in my hand. Eat it, eat it, eat it, I said.
O
As a child, I chased boys on the playground, shoving them down face-first in front of me when I caught them with their backs turned. Then, I would flip them over to see their faces, my little oysters of tears and sand, making a pearl for me.
O
There has never been anything to outgrow. I do not think it could have been given to me, crumpled up and hidden in his fist. Violence is my bone, my hair, my father, the very shape of me.
O
The other night a man brought his gun to my apartment. Black metal sinking into my pink couch. Night blended the colors together and I could not tell the metal from the cushion until my back was pressed against the cold.
Grover
I’m thinking of my mother’s childhood dog
Grover, who was eaten alive by maggots
Half a mile from their farm.
He went into the Kansas wood
Curled up alone. I imagine he saw moss hanging,
Occasional squirrels chittering, heard
Wind only signaled by the leaves.
I hope it was loud there, louder than
Muscle churning, digested back into the wound.
After three of these days he still wasn’t home,
So my mother’s oldest brother Jeff went to look for him.
Jeff lifted Grover’s tail and saw the swarm of
White maggots in his skin
That dog didn’t even try to bite him.
I don’t know if dogs ever hope for a gun.
It is still the only time my mother saw Jeff cry.
I imagine Grover never thought of himself as meat.
I’m embarrassed to be so blue, to have briefly considered
Comparing life to the relentless mouth of a maggot.
It is August, and
I can still watch the sun turn the side of the buildings pink
While an evening cathedral wears a peaceful face.
As God’s placeholder, a child rides a scooter and a bookstore has a sale.
But listen World, I do not love you enough to forgive you.
Snow in Hartford, CT
A baby raven calls to me by the window. I’m high in the morning again.
Most winter trees
those sacred assemblages of oiled bones
will name the threat held within the unending, gray skin of sky.
I feel foolish among the evergreens.
I want to ask them the forbidden question—Why?
One time, my friend, who believes in God,
asked me how in a world of seven billion
did I imagine I was alone?
A limpid afternoon. Creeping yellow
slips down the rim of the horizon.
I had woken up already on that white, wild horse
its dead gallop in my dreams.
About the Author
Kai-Lily Karpman is a poet from Los Angeles, California. Her work reflects mythologies of the West, masculinity, God, and violence.