A high-speed car chase & a half-
on-purpose boob graze: sometimes
my heart feels like both, only
the vehicle in question is an ice
cream truck & the half-graze
is more of a full-on punch & both
sound like “POP Goes the Weasel”
until my ears burst daisies
& my throat sprouts biceps –
I can’t breathe through the chicken-
bone beach crossing its legs
in my nostrils, tanning the span
of my kneecaps as rainbows
come of age and blow away
their hurricane nemeses – I see
the red and blue lights in your eyes,
oscillating in the ebb of your go-away
face – no, come hither, no:
your earlobe has its own language
& I can’t conjugate it anymore.
Kati can’t figure out what she wants to be. Currently, she’s a torn fiction / poetry graduate student at the NEOMFA and a teaching assistant at The University of Akron. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Gesture, among others, and her fiction has appeared in Rubbertop Review, where she also works as co-editor-in-chief. She is a reader of fiction and poetry for Whiskey Island and the Web Manager for the Big Big Mess. Born in Muncie, IN, she was forced into Northeast Ohio on a dare when she was four, and only looks back now if you ask her to.