Kristen Steenbeeke
Day 26
“I forgot for a second which way a calendar goes”
flower panicles out the window beaten down by rain
the day we achieve “bear market” status
i’m looking at a calendar in the doctor’s office bathroom
where each month is a different eye disease
April is a close-up of a child’s retinoblastoma
like milk spilling in a Mars-colored lake
a picture of the child: one bright white pupil
the stock market rose sharply in anticipation
the stock market stumbled, junk status
meanwhile I am collecting midstream
leaving it in a two-way box like Catholic confession
cutting my pills into fours and dipping them in honey
your one-eyed self portrait comes home and watches us onerously
as the toilet clogs, as you gash your finger with a palette knife
capping a volatile week of peaks and falls
we are looking at, we are expecting, crude futures
the future tumbles, pops, swings, snaps, roars, swells, plunges, dives, takes a beating
Kristen Steenbeeke graduated from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she received the Rona Jaffe Foundation Fellowship. She won Indiana Review’s 2017 Poetry Prize and has had work in Electric Literature, Annulet, second factory, Bennington Review, Tagvverk, Catapult, Sixth Finch, and others. She lives in Austin, Texas, and works at Texas Monthly.“I forgot for a second which way a calendar goes”
flower panicles out the window beaten down by rain
the day we achieve “bear market” status
i’m looking at a calendar in the doctor’s office bathroom
where each month is a different eye disease
April is a close-up of a child’s retinoblastoma
like milk spilling in a Mars-colored lake
a picture of the child: one bright white pupil
the stock market rose sharply in anticipation
the stock market stumbled, junk status
meanwhile I am collecting midstream
leaving it in a two-way box like Catholic confession
cutting my pills into fours and dipping them in honey
your one-eyed self portrait comes home and watches us onerously
as the toilet clogs, as you gash your finger with a palette knife
capping a volatile week of peaks and falls
we are looking at, we are expecting, crude futures
the future tumbles, pops, swings, snaps, roars, swells, plunges, dives, takes a beating