Dana Koster
Trigger Words
Maggie tells me creativity
is the sign of an unquiet mind.
Likewise insomnia, likewise
hopelessness. Excessive happiness.
Great productivity. No
productivity.
Tonight’s Lunar Eclipse shines in your 9th House
of Higher Truth – share the glow
with as many people as possible.
Men, women, birds.
Fuck them all.
Likewise irritability.
Likewise denial.
Grandiosity
Dear peasants, say
you knew my benevolence.
That I saved you
oxtail, helped myself only
to the barest of marrow.
Allowed you to suck it clean
when I was done.
It’s true I’ve mounted
the cloud cities
and found them wanting –
Laputa, that floating trash vortex –
I have unmade its castle with my breath.
The West Wind said I’m so good at blowing
that he gave up. I’ll gust
the hottest dust devils
as stiffly as I please.
Comorbidity
I might be half a hummingbird,
Maggie. I might be a lot of things.
I do love to tongue the soft insides
of flowers. You could describe me
as nature’s hypodermic needle.
That would be fair.
I’ve known their torpor, too.
Have longed to drift from my body
as it lay dormant on the bed.
No. It’s not
that I wished to die.
It’s that the thought of dying
no longer concerned me.
Or perhaps the woman and the bird
are comorbid, comingling.
Don’t pretend
you can spot the difference.
Dana Koster was a Wallace Stegner Fellow and a 2012 recipient of the Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Prize. Her poems have appeared in Indiana Review, Southern Humanities Review, Phantom Limb, PN Review and EPOCH, among others. She lives in California’s Central Valley with her husband and young son.
Return to January 2015 Edition
Maggie tells me creativity
is the sign of an unquiet mind.
Likewise insomnia, likewise
hopelessness. Excessive happiness.
Great productivity. No
productivity.
Tonight’s Lunar Eclipse shines in your 9th House
of Higher Truth – share the glow
with as many people as possible.
Men, women, birds.
Fuck them all.
Likewise irritability.
Likewise denial.
Grandiosity
Dear peasants, say
you knew my benevolence.
That I saved you
oxtail, helped myself only
to the barest of marrow.
Allowed you to suck it clean
when I was done.
It’s true I’ve mounted
the cloud cities
and found them wanting –
Laputa, that floating trash vortex –
I have unmade its castle with my breath.
The West Wind said I’m so good at blowing
that he gave up. I’ll gust
the hottest dust devils
as stiffly as I please.
Comorbidity
I might be half a hummingbird,
Maggie. I might be a lot of things.
I do love to tongue the soft insides
of flowers. You could describe me
as nature’s hypodermic needle.
That would be fair.
I’ve known their torpor, too.
Have longed to drift from my body
as it lay dormant on the bed.
No. It’s not
that I wished to die.
It’s that the thought of dying
no longer concerned me.
Or perhaps the woman and the bird
are comorbid, comingling.
Don’t pretend
you can spot the difference.
Dana Koster was a Wallace Stegner Fellow and a 2012 recipient of the Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Prize. Her poems have appeared in Indiana Review, Southern Humanities Review, Phantom Limb, PN Review and EPOCH, among others. She lives in California’s Central Valley with her husband and young son.
Return to January 2015 Edition