compulse
katherine indermaur
I feel responsible
for everything this
morning, meaning
I harbor a regal sadness.
My children, my
kingdom are endless
& on fire. I
bargain. I threaten.
I make promises thin
as ice & see
-through. I swear
my demise & yours
are thicker than blood &
boiling. On the news
227 cold-stunned
sea turtles are dead off
Cape Cod. Their barely
biodegradable shells
sink like fingernails
to tile the ocean floor.
Come evening, all my
cuticles disappear.
Come evening,
come here.
Katherine Indermaur is the author of the chapbook Pulse (Ghost City Press, 2018). Her manuscript "Girl Descends Asunder" was a finalist for the 2019 Gasher Journal First-Book Scholarship. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Bad Pony, Calamity, Coast|NoCoast, Entropy, Frontier Poetry, Ghost Proposal, Muse /A Journal, New Delta Review, Oxidant|Engine, Poetry South, Sugar House Review, Voicemail Poems, and elsewhere. She holds a BA from UNC-Chapel Hill and an MFA from Colorado State University, where she won the 2018 Academy of American Poets Prize. She lives in Salt Lake City. Find her online at katherineindermaur.com.
poetry
