Poetry by Koss

     Monika Murren CC




Living with Dead Poets (for Paula Harris)

dead poets don’t mind
nor did they when living

it isn’t just a Paula thing
nor a poet thing

just the way time 
can let the caring go 

your not minding was the best
I know it’s a bit late for this

and while we never even spoke
on the phone, you show up 

now a light with purple sound and tango
shoes still trying to be a compact

house guest as some things 
spirits don’t forget 

girl, there are things to leave
and things to take 

and I see you in your big escape
hands on hips, thrusting a bit

in your funeral dance
dress, the one your shrink loved

dry humping Prince a la tango
and yes, Paula, there is a heaven

where Prince still fucks 
I know you don’t need me to tell you

and love is a free commodity
and the hormones of it all are enough

to gas you for eternity
and there is a place where shrinks are not

needed, where pills melt into clouds,
no locked doors, no group talk,

no bad surgeries, plastic tubes, no bags
of shit, no bureaucracies

no-bodies to reject you
and all the dead boyfriends come

to life in their still dead way (just as you like)
all “eager-to-please nose breathers”

and the towns are full of men to fuck
(they didn’t escape on a truck)

also, nobody cares If you’re straight(ish)
and Anne and Adrienne are unladied and waiting...

Gertrude and Audre too, 
and Mary wants to read you 

sweet rock poems, but please stay the hell away
from Elizabeth...

and oh, there are others in the room
yes, Virginia, there is a manuscript

Paula’s, several, check them out,
a bourn of life drained to disc—so concise

and Virginia is nodding with head bent
wine swirling in one hand

she adores you and the you of your words, 
your live ones and ghost ones 

and those full of scent and teeth
she inhales the slow rings of smoke 

rising from your vowels and wets 
her sexy lips

against each burn
and she looks at you through 

those brown glassy eyes, sensitive warm eggs 
nested in her ovoid face, her eyelids 

so delicately carved
and finally she nods and smiles

then the words come

she will publish them all

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Koss (she/they/them) is a mixed-race, queer poet, writer, and artist with publications in Chiron Review, Michigan Quarterly (Mixtapes), MER, Cincinnati Review (miCro), Spillway, diode poetry, Five Points, Petrichor, Moonpark Review, BULL, Beaver Mag, Sage Cigarettes, Amethyst Review, Spoon River Poetry Review, MoonPark Review, Mythic Picnic, Midway Journal, Gone Lawn, Variant Lit, Sugar Sugar Salt Lit, Reckon Review, Harpy Hybrid Review, Hyacinth Review,  Anti-Heroin Chic, Red Ogre Review, San Pedro River Review, North Dakota Quarterly, Roi Fainéant Press, Anvil Tongue, Bending Genres, Variant Lit, Bulb Culture Collective, Prelude Magazine, and many others. Anthologies include Best Small Fictions 2020, Get Bent, Ovation, Beyond the Frame, The Dead of Winter III, Querencia’s Winter ’24 Anthology, Duets, Bonemilk II, Secrets in the Garden, Punk, and others. They’ve received numerous award nominations (Best of the Net and Pushcart) and won the 2021 Wergle Flomp Humor Poetry contest. Koss had work longlisted for Wigleaf Top 50, 2024, and their artwork was a finalist in Best of the Net ’24. Their chapbook, Dancing Backwards Towards Pluperfect is coming from Diode Editions in '24. Find links to their work at: https://koss-works.com. Connect on Twitter @Koss51209969.  
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