Overkill
Jet-black lager like domino on swan
Toddler thoughts on the moon’s face
I wrote a novel during the year I knew you
Your casino watch and birthmark
We curved evenings out of rigid anger
You reminded me of a dead world
which is to say my childhood
I knew our time was baby time but I gave
it away anyway, spewing dollars
from buildings. As if no one could touch me
if I closed my eyes
My Dreams Did Not Come True
Eating peppermints and not fitting in
Winter light in my cherry hairstyle,
deerlike in my injury
The lake froze into whipped cream
What is the ontological status
of inexistence?
Is it science or sauce?
There’s not literally a horse
in my head, the horse is in the field
So you just thought of it?
Your eyes were like navy slacks
I pulled on and off
Is it going to go on like this for a while?
Sawing the moon into neat pieces
of Mylanta
Kimberly Lambright is the author of two full-length poetry collections: Doom Glove (PRROBLEM Press, 2024) and Ultra-Cabin (42 Miles Press). She is a MacDowell Colony fellow, and her poetry appears in Phoebe, Columbia Poetry Review, ZYZZYVA, The Burnside Review, and elsewhere. She lives in Brooklyn.
I love the dreamy half-in-the-world-half-out feeling of these poems—and that the moon appears in both of them, both as itself and as a stand-in for dreams of love, and love for the dream.