Poetry by Katie Chicquette

             stanze CC




Next Year

I’m going to seed my lawn with soft, sweet clover--
what’s left of it anyway, because next year I plan
to steal my lawn back bit by bit from my lawnmower
and British Petroleum and the epitaphs of my great-grandchildren;
sorry lawn, you’re about to become hostas and clover and mulch,
and no, I am not actually sorry at all.

Next year, I’m going to plant so many different kinds
of basil right outside my door that my fears 
will choke on their spicy cloud of airy joy,
and I will buy not a few but a whole shelf
of the impatiens at Aldi marked down to $2
because the refrigerated truck got caught 
in a traffic jam outside Chicago, and they wilted
in a way that tricks the uninitiated into thinking
they are dead when they are just very, very thirsty.

Next year I will paint a single wall dark teal
and wonder if this is the right gold velvet
to keep it company and I will not ask
for anyone else’s opinion.

I will spray paint old porch lights, and 
watercolor geometric shapes, and paint my name 
with a dollar store sparkler, even if I spend
the 4th of July alone.

Next year, I’ll have to write new mental narratives 
for the noises in the night, because I’ll only 
be able to blame them on my children
half the time. I’ll write grocery lists for meals
I always meant to make that only suited me,
I’ll grate fresh ginger and saute portobellos
and as I cook I’ll sing at the top of my lungs
instead of the bottom. I’ll write journal entries
in invisible ink so I won’t be tempted to relive
my mourning -- or my indecision. 

Next year, I’m sure I will still wear my sadness
like a thick, heavy blanket, but next year,
I will remember that’s all it is, and shrug
it off. But because I am not some hardened,
slovenly beast, I won’t just leave it there; 
I’ll pick it up, fold it with care, set it to the side--
I won’t pretend my grief isn’t real, every tear-track
a stitch in this long and lonely time. But
what a relief it will be to know that I can sometimes
set it to the side. To know that I didn’t need it
as a shroud because I was dead--I was just very,
very thirsty.

​



​Imagine What Your Soul Looks Like

She says imagine what your soul looks like
I find it trite and wondrous at once
and not as a floaty orb of mist, 
she adds, as though this were obvious

then waves her hand, the most casual
racetrack flag-drop “go!” a person could do,
and so, we go, words chasing our pens
across the page, but three words in, I panic

I try not to think--this is always the advice
when asked to imagine and reflect and 
remember in writing--which both helps
and hinders; how can I imagine it without

thinking? And there it is: cheetah print
velvet dissolving (thank God, how gauche)
into a shovel, dented and dirty--it slices down,
the dirt explodes and whitens, sudden stars

against an indigo sky over my high school 
years, I am lying on my back at the escarpment,
on the soccer field, my head swims and I know
my soul is so far away in that ether but still

attached to me, a slippery film, always slick
even when I numb myself to try to dry it out
so I don’t need to worry or wonder or make
excuses or have ethics or feel pain-- it leaves

damp footprints all over my life; my fingers 
slide down my arm to feel the thin film and come
away powdery and--is that glitter? Jesus--I flick
them, dust my palms, it all flakes off in a dense

puff (oh shit, is an orb?) but no the puff is solid
now, every shade of purple including the smell
of purple which is an early May lilac outside
my money pit childhood home, I breathe it in 

and there is nothing but the scent, not what I said 
or did or meant, so intense I have to close my eyes 
(aren’t they already closed?) tighter, sealed shut so tight
like a beaten-up boxer in a fight, they won’t open

but I’m trying, straining against the black
like trying to scream in a dream--is seeing
your soul like hitting the ground when you fall
in the dream? This scares me, I don’t want to 

see my soul anymore, imaginatively or philosophically
or photorealistically and thankfully my eyes, my real
eyes snap open, I see the industrial clock on the wall
and she claps once and says, Excellent--
                                                                             you did it
​
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Katie is an alternative education teacher and Pushcart nominee in Appleton, Wisconsin.  Her work has appeared in a variety of publications, including Poets Reading the News, Riggwelter, Bramble, Portage, and New Verse News. She’s fortunate to be surrounded by so many active poets in Wisconsin, and young adults willing to stay open to poetry. Contact her at [email protected].