Kristen Orser

Fever on Your Cheek

Bones, this is not a reminiscence of the war.  You know what this is, don't you?  The best way

to do the same thing is to keep Jupiter in your tenth house.  And, yes, talk to yourself, sign your name to nothing that matters.  Here are the dreams

you had as a child:  Plastic and petroleum-based plastic.  It's insane

to think that there are heart shaped faces, triangle shaped faces, but nothing that resembles a screaming planet.  I like

to believe the narrative will explain all the disappearing children.  Nothing explains

the hours I spent watching the news.  You can't chainsaw your way into understanding all the silences, but you can chainletter anyone you want.  Moonshine

has bottomless cups of coffee.  The radio says there are bombs, but I know when you hear that you only think of cannonballs

and not everything, everything, that makes me muddy headed. 

Kristen Orser is the author of E AT I (Wyrd Tree Press, 2009) and Fall Awake (Taiga Press, 2009), Squint (Dancing Girl Press, 2009), and Winter, Another Wall (blossombones, 2008). Her work has most recently appeared in If Poetry Journal, Indefinite Space, FOURSQUARE, Cannot Exist, Caketrain, Pineapple War and elsewhere.