Lee Krauss
When the Dead Smell Divine
The odour of used books
and almond flour—
memory smells sweet like soil.
Honey butter assumption, money muffin myth—
There’s jasmine in the attic.
A sprig saved for each.
A vial of oil set aside
cushioned by cobwebs.
You escape acknowledgment like pink
salt, but the heartbreak of it all takes up space—
lavender cotton blowing in the wind
sun-drenched.
Somewhere, there is someone
who smells like baby powder only after
a day of crying, whose tears give pity a scent
distinct as rosehip.
Stigmata can refer to endless
hunger for suffering
endless floral feminities.
A subtle smell: like spit
and ground allspice, but with certainty:
a sweet amber base, one as simple as syrup—
undone.
The Grasslands
Do you think a countryside stripped bare of its crops might sometimes appreciate the wind that
uprooted the last wheat field? Or do you think it looks inward at its profound desolation and thinks
well, even if it was as gentle as it left, I still ached for it to stay, or maybe one-time warmth does not
erase the cold of your previous destructions. There wasn’t even love in your deception; it tasted bitter
like chalk when it rippled and settled down. If swallowing counts as microdosing cannibalism, I
retched your body up with a different throat than the one I ate with.
Lee Krauss is a queer poet from rural Maryland and Pennsylvania and a current MFA candidate at George Mason University. They are the Managing Editor of phoebe journal and a reader for Poetry Daily. Their work has been featured in The York Review, and they won the 2023 & 2024 Mary Jane’s Diamond Prize from The Academy of American Poets. When they’re not writing, they’re typically spending time with their little black cat, Enid.
Banner Art:
Photo by Utunzaji wa Mazingira, Unsplash, 2023
