Katie Grierson

The Body Is So Body
after Ada Limón

This election will likely be the end
of woodpeckers, swaying to jazz, gushing, robots in love, the endpoint
of aquariums and green apples shared between hands, goodbye
to blood drives, stargazing, elementary school plays, places we go
to be good. Against the pan, I break the body of an egg.
On the news, a newscaster is crying. The fruit in the fruit bowl
is rotting, badly browned, a little depressed. The Supreme Court
is trying to determine if a puddle is a puddle.
A survey implores: is the world getting better
or is the world getting worse? The newscaster is tired
of reporting dead children in the lake. The eggshells crack
like lightning bolts. I try to eat but what happens is hurt.
This election, I am asking my body
to be less which feels the same as asking the ocean
to be a puddle. The Supreme Court hands down a decision
and it says: Gone fishing. What happens is hurt, in-laws visiting,
bad milk you only notice is bad when it’s already in your mouth.
Everyday feels like Wednesday. Children floating in lakes
like sad goldfish flakes.           But the body is so body
the way it stays alive. Despite. Election day and I take out the eggs
and say thank you to the fridge, that I have a fridge, that it does
a marvelous job of keeping cold. The world is getting better,
and the world is getting worse. Thank god for morning. Thank god
for looking out the window and seeing bloom. Thank god
for yolk and hearts, which only ever break for love.

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Katie Grierson (she/her) might be a poet. She could be receiving an MFA at Arizona State University. She may have been recognized by YoungArts, the Academy of American Poets University Prizes, and as a Best of the Net Nominee. She probably was a prose editor for Lumiere Review, and it could be that her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Silly Goose Press and Thimble Literary Magazine, among others.