On Thursday I miss the ember of alone.
Friday, I wake to lemon juice flooding in
and breathe deep into my pillows dream-praying
for night to return to me
a woman
to finally dance with.
And on Saturday I scream at the television
while orcas drown
a gray whale calf.
Sunday I cook dinner
for two, memorialize
the leftovers, bury them in the fridge.
Monday a woman says to me, I don’t want to be rude, but no.
Tuesday I drive out to work in the small mountain town Skykomish and feel the grizzly
bear of boredom on my back. There’s always
a Wednesday, and sometimes, like this one,
they giggle to a close with a peach fizz sky.
Come back around, Thursday. I’ve missed
a phone call. I will write back. I will make plans.
But We Never Spoke
We’ve been holding the husk
of a pumpkin seed between our hands for three seasons.
And now, as I walk away,
I can see the imprint of my half
which I know
will always resemble your half.
The heart of life aches with most heft
for seeds that never hit earth.
Opera House
Singing is a physical, emotional, spiritual, intellectual expression of my breath.
—Jessye Norman
When you were walking on the roof, I was down below
singing a secret song. I boxed up each beat,
and slept with a symphony—string instruments
stridulating—under my pillow. You turned
down the corner of your year,
but I ripped the sheets off the mattress
to find crooning crickets—cause of our coma, right-angled
night angels breaking body to coo to you.
When you lit the fire—smoke—murk—muck lurked, and I couldn’t breathe.
We forgot to open up the mouth
of our house to the cold night.
We tried to set the burn free. Instead, suffocating
in our own strain. I could keep a song
hidden for years—hoard
lyrics, hoard perfect dissonance,
hoard skin of the drum.
But chords awake in the early morning hours
cast shadows on the sleepers below.
Dallas Raquel Klein is a queer Chicana poet living in the Pacific Northwest. She received her MFA from Texas State University and her MLIS from University of Washington. Her work can be found in Broadkill Review, Stonecoast Review, ASU's Zocalo and other print and online collections.
