three poems

Katrina Underwood

2 a.m.

I do most of my writing at night.

Tonight is the same while still being entirely different than every other night that’s ever been had though for all intents and purposes it is exactly the same. There is some kind of I-can–only-assume unauthorized construction being done at 2am. Is this what happens when construction workers procrastinate? They pull an all-nighter? I don’t think this is legal but I don’t care enough to take action. I’m awake. I would be awake through no fault of the hammering so the hammering is just an added sensory experience.

In addition, someone appears to be doing a kind of ritual where they have decided to throw away every item of glass they own into the dumpster one by one. It is an odd ritual but who am I to criticize. Maybe it is the fine wedding china from a now impending divorce. Maybe it’s the wine bottle collection they’ve been saving for a DIY etsy account to make wine bottle lamps, wine bottle candles, and other wine bottle things that they hadn’t yet thought of. They now realized they are not a DIY person. They enjoy buying candles from the clearance section at Target and already have all the lamps they need and the wine bottles are now taking up a corner of the kitchen, reminding them of the cheap wine they’ve consumed. Maybe it’s their mothers precious moments collection which they have been asked to put on eBay.

Whatever it is, it is a physical item that must go immediately and I can understand that.

Where else can one shatter glass in the city if not in the safety of the alley dumpster at 2am?

THE CONFESSION

Thoughts I think but would never say in elevator type conversation.

1. Sometimes I indulge in hate. Like, sometimes I love the safety of the binary – GOOD and EVIL. People are one thing.

2. I know if I’m crying for a place on the other side of the world that I have no idea how to pronounce because American geography sucks but I’m sure this place is actually suffering because the male narrator’s voice is very authoritative and sure of himself.

3. This whole binary belief is nice for about five minutes max. Then I am reminded of my actual full-fledged belief in empathy. That binaries are never correct, and everything is situation based or fluid or on a sliding scale of morality.

4. I wonder if not buying environmental cleaners makes me a bad person. I’m sure from my granola appearance and vegetarian status people believe I buy them. Perhaps this is more important. What people perceive of me.

5. Do I look like I recycle? What is it exactly? The tattoo, the piercing? Jokes on you, no recycling for me. I used to have so many individualistic ethics. Composting, recycling, gardening, organic. It was easier back then.

6. Now, I’ll just end up asking people deep questions in shallow settings, feeling like a weed.

bodies

Are our bodies really ever our own? Even in death, your body is getting manhandled by some stranger filling you with chemicals. Pickling you like some kind of garden cucumber, so you look alive enough. Who knows what vulgarities are said behind closed doors? These are female worries. How we look even as a corpse. What burden our bodies will bestow to others. How aesthetically pleasing or hideous we will be in death. If only we were cats and could crawl, off to die alone with some dignity. Instead, there has to be some kind of body parade with an ambulance, nurses, doctors, a coroner. A carnival of people who have never met you will see your meat suit and you’ll have no choice. I’d rather be tossed into a Taco Bell dumpster, buried in an unmarked grave in the forest. It all seems so indecent.