Year One, First Friday of August
Then She Buried It
Cracking hard candy
like fractured ulna
too simple soluble.
Play a part in my
recovery. It had to
be vertical.
Counter my nat.
20 apology : every sorry
other sorry word. You
cope only reading
monologue, as I try
dialogue. I’m too
aged
much ; I want to toddle
with you : release
definite, find the length
of forever.
Boxed Macaroni
Recipes are there for a reason. Can I invoke
myself? Though, I know how fake
this is without the clumping reminders.
My disconnected nervous system
or inability to interpret
the needs of physicality.
Shells or elbows; yelloworange & cream.
Thing in need of repair. Sometimes
just quiet acid: stop eating myself. I’d
rather reset than barely
worthwhile scrap diagnosis.
Limiting terms translucent bottles
wrapping morning & evenings.
Delay bile until I’m alone.
You have to surrender to commune
Purposefully small tortillas
with the kid’s fork careful
whetting; boiling water
cohesion. Kindness
and worry parking
a drive-in Lamar lunch.
My collective diseased
pieces haven’t earned
that time or care. At least
I can control this difficulty
of my body: I can grip
rugae like reins, a lacking
appetite ruined with autoplay.
Nothing like Whataburger coke
or microwave kraft mac to ease
a running mind; contain this prescriptive life
If it doesn’t
Have I slept in or just
enough; I can only conjure
your voice along the chill
of ice ball. Maybe each
time I try a cheesesteak
a memorial processes.
The lost recipe ex-
changed for two beautiful
guitars collecting closet dust.
Others getting this slipped
contact. I too try
to decipher inactive days
and callous images.
I know my funerals
stress my liver;
I don’t think
I’ll ever learn.
No matter how sick
alcohol makes me,
I’d down Moose
Drool fifty six days,
if you just might
walk into the Maple
Leaf. Runaway
from the closing prescriptions
when they’ve only saved me.
Keagan Wheat (he/they), a born and raised Houston poet, writes about trans identity and congenital heart disease. His work appears in The Acentos Review, Kissing Dynamite, ALOCASIA, and more. They are the author of microchapbook, Come to the Table (Black Stone/ White Stone 2022); he has a forthcoming chapbook, Pressure Come Back through Bullshit Lit. Check out his interviews with Brooklyn Poets, Latinx Lit, and Poets and Muses. Find them @kwheat09.