Katey Funderburgh

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Hopeful

On Election Day we’re all distracted by the caution tape
strung up around the mail truck robbed at gunpoint

in the afternoon. Shielding the sun from my face I ask the neighbor
if the mailman is okay. Eyes wide as a mare’s, she says

I don’t know I don’t know I should have asked him I don’t know
and then her child comes outside and grips her elbow. She exhales.

As a teenager I used to pilfer lipsticks. In every store, the compulsion
to pocket. I never wore most of them, just doled them out of my locker. Were you also

a mistake? a lover asked me once. We’d carved our initials into an Aspen
on a hike that day, not a single cloud in the sky so I bore the markings

of a sunburn for weeks afterwards. In bed we drank strawberry wine
purchased with my fake ID. I wanted to give her

more than I could give her. Outrageous Red
was the name of the lipstick I used to draw hearts on the neck

of my horse. I remember because
I kept it for its name and for her, my mare,

who lowered her forehead to mine when I got off the bus after school.
Now I see her in all worried women. Yes,

the stakes have always been this high. I sit on the floor to watch the votes come in.
The birthday card from my mother will never get delivered. I hope

whoever took it knows she calls me honey. I hope
they use the money she sent for something that makes them feel wanted and free.

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In Edinburgh

I’d been awake all night
when morning showed up
in the city. Their streets all cobblestone
like the pictures. Their questions
the same each time
they learned I am
American: Does everyone
carry a gun? How
did he win? Twice,
someone adds: Does it make
you sad? Other tourists
were circling the street performer
so I did too, taking my place
in their ring. Did he choose me
because I was alone? You–
pointed to my chest– be the princess
in this story. When he told
the crowd to clap for me I forgot
that I could leave. The performer
erected a pole in the middle
of the street. He blew fire
from his mouth. Sometimes you learn
things you’d rather keep secret
from your younger self. Like magic
is just a man with oil on his tongue. He
climbed up and then down and then
up again and instructed the princess
to dance around so she did. Two men
volunteered from the crowd as lovers
in the story and the princess, she
was such a good princess, refused
to choose between them. Now kill
yourself, the performer yelled from the top
of his tower. Lay yourself down
in the street. And the princess (she
was such a good princess) drew a knife
from this strange air and fell
to her knees like she knew
how to do. Lovers always have such
glossy eyes, I was dead and looking
up between four. Always the best
way to learn something
is from this angle. Hey
Strawberry– once called to me
in an American bar and I
turned like he’d said my real name.
Obedience, here they only realize
I’m American when I start to speak,
my hair grown so long and honey-colored,
the man I meet in the pub has plenty to pull
when we fuck in the bathroom. He has the same
questions, I have practice by then: some
-times, I don’t know. Then
I volunteer: It makes me sad.
I wouldn’t sleep on the night of the election.
There was this little girl in me staving off
dreams, whispering Maybe maybe maybe.
And she had so much hope in her throat.

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Take Me With You

Birds morph their flocks
through the just-rained air.
We shiver, tether
pink clouds to the insides
of our eyelids. There’s mold
in the bathroom tiles
again. There’s cough syrup
stashed in my purse. The bar
-tender shrugs, charges me
for just one plastic cup full
of whiskey instead of two. Should we
cancel the party? So much
sickness going around, so much
is spreading. I discovered
I was immune to poison ivy
when my sister drew us a house
in the dirt with a stick
when I pulled vines from the ditch
to use as necklaces and we stood
in the drawn living room
with our faces lifted up,
sucking the sugar
from the smell of burning
trash, her neck
rashing, swelling, hot
to the touch. All these flags
at half-mast. All these receipts
half-crumpled on the bar top.
The article I am trying
to read about the shooter
in my hometown is behind
a paywall. Can you
feel that? The pulse
of the speakers, the pounding
of boots on the dance floor. Only I can hear
the quiver in my sister’s voice. Like
a dog whistle. Calm down.
Everyone you love
is still alive. Your sister
texts you I’ve been
dreaming of the guns
my whole life, I didn’t even
recoil when the shots rang out.
Calm down. The sun rises
in the East, sets in the West. Birds
land on the concrete
outside the bar.
Calm
down. Birds
are still
here. Your
sister is still
here. You’re
still here. Calm
down. Why don’t you
go
take
a walk. Go
take it. With
both hands.

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“My Birth” by Frida Kahlo, Retablo, Oil on Metal, 1932

The wooden slats of the floor
in a room empty except
for the bed, dark headboard
and sheets clean except
for the smear of blood below
the spread legs of a woman, between which
her own head emerges with a halo
of hair, a taut bundle
of white blankets where her face
should be, and above
the bed a framed photograph
of god’s Madonna. Madonna herself
refuses to loan the painting out
to museums, keeps it hanging
in her mansion, says if her guests don’t like it
they can’t be her friend, says Frida
is my muse, my soul
-mate. Before the bell each day, one
of my friends would lean
into the mirror and stab her lips
with her fingernails until
her lips swelled. Said she
wanted Madonna’s pout. Another
sobbed in my arms while
the abortion pills worked through
her body.        In my head I kept
chanting          don’t look away don’t
look away don’t make her
feel alone.
                      Beautiful
everywhere
everywhere woman, do you
have someone to hold you
when you’re scared?

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Ars Poetica

Quiet, love, the house
is humming, all
our dishes put
away and the cat
blinking from her place
in your lap, can you
hear it, the lull
of being good, so
good the trees cleave
from their own
leaves, the spigot
gasps and fills, the peaches
ripen silent and smooth
as baby skin, listen
to all we make
by shuttering, I mean
everything dusted
and shelved, I mean this
is the soft static of palm
against ear, of course
it is lovely here, hush,
our sighs echo inside
our own bodies, the sounds
of sheets pulled overhead, of
curtains drawn and
windows closed and
porch lights flicked off and
the bombs not falling
anywhere and the guns
not in our dreams and
our whole lives to forget
how no one screamed
Hold me.

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Banner Art:
Is This Death, Alexander Gardner, Antietam Battlefield, September 1862