compostmodernism by Kristin Lueke
Poetry editor Sara Daniels on today’s poem: In “compostmodernism,” Kristin Lueke crafts a snapshot of a world at once playful, dismal, and revelatory: rife with global capitalism, disillusionment, and the wonders of a chicken. Lueke locates glimmers of humor and intelligence in even the most dismal cardboard box, disorienting the reader (and the body) just enough to maybe, maybe jolt us from the bottom of the compost pile and into the act of creation.
compostmodernism
proprioception is none of my business. i’m in the racket of losing my mind. there’s squirrels here, screaming from the dryest branches. other people’s children, losing a future. cardboard delivered in two days by the false god of convenience from the deepest depths of an impoverished imagination torn to shreds. i’m turning the pile to keep it hot enough to kill anything that might strangle out the garden that so far only exists as an idea. except. goddamn if i know where my feet are. where the nail makes a mess of me. i carry out a week’s worth of brown banana peels, torn drafts, tea bags steeped twice in too hot hard water, give us this day our daily avocado & all of my napkins too. i’m trying to make dirt here, understand my own hands & put them where it pays. buy less. turn my numbers into names like aster. hold a silkie to my breast.
Kristin Lueke is a Chicana poet and author of the chapbooks here i show you a human heart and (in)different math (Dancing Girl Press). Her poems appear in Sixth Finch, HAD, Wildness, The Maine Review, Okay Donkey and elsewhere. She has been nominated for a Pushcart, Best of the Net and Best New Poets, and holds an MA from the University of Chicago as well as an AB from Princeton University, where she received the Morris W. Kroll Poetry Prize. She lives in Cerrillos, NM and writes at theanimaleats.com. Find her at @klooky on Bluesky and Instagram
