Bewilder
       

I'm the screen door always smacking open.
Inside my chest, there's an archaic turntable.
The needle's been yanked off-kilter

so I spin with the wonky rage of a typhoon.

I'm immune, throwing myself like sleet
into the baby's ears, across her cheeks.

And then the truck sliding on black ice—less
tonic than bitters; a blunt swig saying I am
flesh. And not new. I'm trying. I try to be

the lighthouse, not the restive searchlight
troubling night's troughs. Bioluminescent,

I fish-flip through tangled fronds of thought
re-crossing my heart. I'm an aching hinge
always put to use. That tiny whine keeps me

from dreams. It's my shift. My mind, an

addled craft idling above shoulders, is set
to whisk whomever's tromping crop-circles
back home to a far-off star; I joke I could

stay, having found my kind. Crumpled,

I wake needing stronger spectacles
for things to take shape. Relentless fog
needling through mesh. Or smoke. I am

that storm whose improbable second front
mounts for another sweep through god-
knows-what . . .

What have you heard?

What will happen next?

I slam, then slam again in a gust when asked.

Tweet
Copyright © 2016 Katrina Roberts All rights reserved
from Poetry Northwest
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission