Katie Kalisz
First Book
I want to bury the boxes
of books in the yard, somewhere
the dog can’t dig them up. I want to
do it while it’s raining so the pages
get soaked, the ink bleeds out
of the words, the pages return
to their purity. But it is winter. The ground
is frozen. I have missed my chance.
Instead, this book becomes
another child to nurse through
the cold season, through the risk
of flu and other epidemics, under the constant
gray sky. Something else I must
tend and nourish. Something else to lug
around town with me on errands,
in case someone wants to buy a copy, wants to
torture me with attention like I am selling
watches from a grey trench coat.
Katie Kalisz is the author of Quiet Woman, a finalist for the 2018 Main Street Rag Poetry Book Award. Her second book, Flu Season, is forthcoming from Cornerstone Press. She is the recipient of a 2023 Elizabeth George Foundation Grant, and her poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. She lives in Michigan with her husband and their three children.