Poetry by Kristin Entler

                       ​ Matthew Paul Argall CC



MRJ & KEW

I tried not to ask about the steel molds 
we put in the oven this morning, 
the dough that needed to proof, 

about why you clenched keys in your fists 
in a doughnut shop down south,
in your hometown, and why

you purposefully mispronounced kolache, 
cool-ach-e. Until you let the diagnosis slip. 
It’s all hard on the kidneys this first year 

so we overflow with too much sugar 
and whiskey that you’ve flasked away. 
Instead, I asked if the initials on the picnic table 

across the street were yours: 
whether we should scratch them out or add mine,
like this is all we’ll ever leave behind.

​

Kristin Entler is a disabled queer writer who grew up in rural Alabama. She received her M.A. in English from The University of Alabama at Birmingham but now lives in Arkansas where she’s working on her M.F.A. in Poetry at the University of Arkansas. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in publications such as The Bitter Southerner, Poetry South, and Gulf Stream Literary Magazine among others. When not working on her thesis, she is probably trying to train her service dog-to-be, Azzie.

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