Needed not soft chicken but self-check-in,
typed again. Got stuck inside
a question of identification: extended
family or emotional relation, clicked
and unclicked—this went for with people,
too. The common moon surfaced
like a moon jelly, more jelly
than moon, a whitehead disrupting
a wine-faced night, an eyeless
medusa that seas. To be only mildly
stunned. To be only mildly stunned?
We are told of our fundamental wetness,
our watery composition, given
a percentage in which to float.
The hardening, a guise. Committed
to finding the hide-a-key I felt sure
was there, needing into myself.
Felt disturbed by eater after eater’s
delicate approach to cream cheese,
learning anew what it means to be
“spread thin,” even with enough tubs
for shared abundance. Know what
has tutored this. The lived disparities.
With what seems to be its endless spin,
a kind of life in death, a bias towards living,
found comfort in the stellar corpse.
Kristi Maxwell is the author of nine books of poems, including WIDE ASS OF NIGHT (Saturnalia Books, 2025) and GONERS (Green Linden Press, 2023). She is the Director of Creative Writing and an associate professor of English at the University of Louisville.
