Kathleen Hellen
Two Poems
the few that will replace us
A replaceable thumb, a flash drive in the nail of the prosthesis. We trust
the monsters to fulfill us. Kermit moving totes along a magnet. Bert and
Ernie transporting the boxes, adding jobs, minimizing injuries.
There are tips for buying shoes for swollen feet, guided exercises for
the “athletes” at workstations. No one out of service like the bus. No one
urinating in a bottle. No cutting corners. We keep up with the warehouse
orders, trust that every day’s a sunny day, that Everything’s OK
while Scooter’s in development.
dear malcolm
with reference to his speech on the climate of hate
yes, the chickens roost on hate, the roof of every suffering—”pain”
as the objective when you weaponize the space
a woman or a man inhabits—for example,
when you sodomize with sticks, when you strip the monster that exists under misfortune. I’ve read some suffer air, some suffer water.
What serious impairment, dysfunction of the organ synonymous with heart (see the “torture memo”) engenders the defenses? The cause, I say, concerning …
See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oD6aX3dHR2k
Kathleen Hellen’s collection meet me at the bottom is forthcoming in Fall 2022 from Main Street Rag. Her credits include The Only Country Was the Color of My Skin, her prize-winning collection Umberto’s Night, and two chapbooks, The Girl Who Loved Mothra and Pentimento. Featured on Poetry Daily and Verse Daily, her work has appeared in Ascent, Barrow Street, The Carolina Quarterly, Colorado Review, jubilat, New Letters, North American Review, Prairie Schooner, The Rumpus, Subtropics, The Sycamore Review, and West Branch, among others.
To learn more about Kathleen and her work, visit kathleenhellen.com
