2 July 2008 | Vol. 8, No. 2
Self-Portrait with Cockroach
Trespass is what we say
when we mean willful: a covert
footprint you leave outside
her bedroom window: when
harm's been done: an unlawful
tampering, a body marked:
what keeps you up all night
listening to the neighbor
call his cats in: oh the animals
we might choose to save, put them
on a polystyrene ark to Mars: what
we start that finishes us: the seventy-
four degree day in December:
ice-cream trucks parked outside
our tall buildings: air conditioners
buzzing: your hands sticky
with cream and sugar: the last
frozen objects on earth: our little
experiment, our vanity project
gone awry: side effects: the forced
music of your body's slapping
rhythm when it lands against
your lover: how you do love her:
your sun, your moon: your
carbon: that prison of molecules
you call flesh: an insect, a bug:
dirty light: no light at all:
a wave as well as a particle.
About the author:
Keetje Kuipers has received fellowships from the Vermont Studio Center, the Squaw Valley Community of Writers, Oregon Literary Arts, and SoapStone. She was the recipient of the 2007 Margery Davis Boyden Wilderness Writing Residency, as well as the second place winner of the 2007 Nimrod/Hardman Pablo Neruda Prize in Poetry. Her poems are currently published or forthcoming in Prairie Schooner, West Branch, Painted Bride Quarterly, and Willow Springs, among others. You can hear her read her work at the online audio archive From the Fishouse.
For further reading:
See the complete list of work by Keetje Kuipers at 42opus. Browse the contents of 42opus Vol. 8, No. 2, where "Self-Portrait with Cockroach" ran on July 2, 2008. List other work with these same labels: poetry.
