by KateLynn Hibbard
Homeostasis: the balance the body seeks. Good things come
to she who waits, so why should my cells be different?
The flowers in the photograph are somehow lush and brittle
at the same time. Beautiful and indifferent.
Early morning quiet. The lack of defined sound is a sound
of its own. Not sleeping or waking, it’s hard to tell the difference.
I want to describe the silence inside a bell not ringing
but passivity and passion’s knell are different.
Those songs I spent months learning and can’t get out of my head
will soon be replaced by some other hell, no different.
The continuing drama of our household – why
would we think that yelling makes a difference?
The surest sign my mother disliked me, and my clothes, and
my lover: her resigned “Well, Dear, now that’s different.”
KateLynn Hibbard’s books are Sleeping Upside Down, Sweet Weight, and Simples, winner of the 2018 Howling Bird Press Poetry Prize. Some journals where her poems have appeared include Barrow Street, Ars Medica, Nimrod, and Prairie Schooner. Editor of When We Become Weavers: Queer Female Poets on the Midwest Experience, she teaches at Minneapolis College and lives with many pets and her spouse Jan in Saint Paul, Minnesota.
Emerge Literary Journal 