if who

some nights

you may experience

thought’s diamond

drop           squeezed

from an enraged

zero. strained

& so so

bitterly wrought

some nights

labour, some nights

grieve, some nights

exorcise somnolence

o who                  come middle age

can enjoy their white noise machine

their plastic anti-bruxism mouthpiece

their apnea apparatus           & allow

their subconscious to work

its internalized heresies

its backward dance

its sandpaper erasures that smooth it to sleep

as night drips

pandemic & toil

& the schoolchildren

dream of sugar’s

refined fluorescence

speed into tomorrow’s

slapstick

hyped by lucky charms

hallucinate 

locker-lined corridors

that twist into a rich dad

poor dad

pedagogy

& their anemic allowance

offers only

a leadership mentality

fueled by squats &

plant-based proteins

by plyometrics

only

feral invective

to arise

& grind – but tonight

that rare

ecstatic hour between

the internet’s thirst traps &

the pillow’s

wicked blow

is –

o

who                      

can afford to release

their unrealized life

into a freakish

disambiguating

microtonal cry

Copyright © 2024 by Kaie Kellough. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on June 10, 2024, by the Academy of American Poets. 

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“This poem is a short section from within a much larger poem. It has been a long time since I’ve written a brief, self-contained lyric work. This piece serves a particular function within the larger poem from which it’s drawn, and that is to avoid dwelling within itself, and instead to carry its momentum into what is yet to come. It is less about the poem as a fully realized work, and more about the poem as direction, as possibility, as opening into.”
—Kaie Kellough