Kate Lutzner
Three Poems
Glassed In
I feel glassed in in your new
apartment. So long ago I felt
like this. Then the White House
made me think about you
and me and what we were
to each other. You put on your
purple hair and marched
against everything we despised.
I had decided not to care
for myself, an indentation
in the bed. You shot soft
daggers into me, hoping
that would help me
get up. I ruined us, or
the President did.
I forgot what we were
worshipping.
Happiness
We shave our heads for attention.
Right away, I get nostalgic
for hair. The telephone calls, dumb.
I’m pretty sure the President is sleeping.
I get suicidal over almost nothing, a daily
occurrence. My skin blots with lesions
pretty as pink roses. My boyfriend
salutes my beauty. We are lying
in bed, our bodies flat.
Relationships in Captivity
We’re beautiful dying on the carpet, all our juices
soaking and drying. The news plays
on a loop. We can’t stand it, but we don’t stop
it. We’ve never gone on a protest march,
but our boyfriends have, especially the one
who takes a nap each day so he can perform
later. When the TV goes off, we feel
our sadness. Our tears are soft.
All we know is this moment.
There is someone from our pasts
we hate, and it sours our stomachs
until we wretch. We focus on the present,
write “Welcome home” on our kitchen
walls so we remember where we left
off. There are oceans nearby
but we don’t think of them, crossing
so close they wet our feet.
—Submitted on 01/07/2021
Kate Lutzner is the author of Invitation to a Rescue (Poet Republik Limited, 2016). Her poems and stories have appeared in Antioch Review, Mississippi Review, The Brooklyn Rail, BlazeVOX, Rattle, and other journals. Lutzner holds a JD from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and an MFA from The City College of New York. She lives in Brooklyn.
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