KARA LEWIS
Aubade With Empty Spoon
At the bar where they lit our drinks on fire like a performance piece, you told me all the art you’d seen was already torched. Overworked, burnt at the edges and unable to be salvaged. Ready for consumption like a bloodless steak. I called you The Curator in text messages before we ever met. You used to love looking at paintings until you met rich people who stored them in climate-controlled units they’d never visit. It became your job to talk to them about Basquiat and baseball. I used to start every day like the cherry poised on a spoon in our public sculpture park – hearty, stem bent heavenward. I carried my student ID in my wallet through my 20s so I could get into museums for free. Until a staff member said, That’s not you and I knew she was right. The laminate had peeled away from my face. People online complained it now cost 20 bucks just to step out in public. The cherry was flown to New York for a year to be repainted. On dates, I sometimes disassociated, imagining myself as a stainless steel orb stuffed into the stomach of a small aircraft. Only five ancient experts in a faraway city could replicate my shade of red. Or, I imagined myself as the spoon, an outstretched, waiting surface. Nights at the park, kids would climb it and an omnipresent voice would come over the intercom to say, No playing on the art no touching the art no sitting on the art. I wanted to rip the spoon from its soil and go sprinting down the streets in search of the biggest bowl of cereal. I wanted to believe spoons sprouted naturally from the ground like surreal silver flowers. If I swung from the spoon, someone would remove me. I had outgrown gentle announcements and forgiveness. When you moved to San Francisco, you entered a painting I couldn’t see. A fuzzy landscape of endless, unclimbable hills. Flames licking their greenery. I realized I’d been using you all along to work my way into the poem. It felt better than beginning with the man who kicked a stoic Aphrodite feet away from me, screaming, Bitch bitch bitch. Better than remembering the murals replaced by billboards. The one advertising fentanyl tests read, Is it real or are you dead? Better than the sun like a torch and any symbol I tried to find in scorching.
When I Start to Feel Hopeless, I Buy String Lights from Home Goods
and wrap them around my porch,
an orbit of radiant arms. I flip the switch
and picture my mind as a light bulb.
Yellow is the most visible color from a distance,
the way people I barely knew once called me brilliant –
sharp, like the cut of a diamond. I want an Earth
that fits on my finger while I lay under
this jaundiced, endless stretch of stars.
My best friend reads to us about supernovas:
explosions, how the sky might collapse in on itself.
This night reminds them of selling telescopes one summer,
a temporary lens to gaze through while they charted a future
big as Jupiter. Now, the world feels as small
as the Starbucks lot in our suburban hometown.
When you extinguish, you are colorless.
We shop for sheets of glow-in-the-dark stars.
We read our horoscopes to feel closer to the moon.
I’m swiping on Tinder for an Aquarius
or an astronaut. Give me love so otherworldly
it feels like instant shipping.
Its’s very millennial to wear this much yellow, a man smirks
at my mustard sweater, the sparkly, plastic bumble bees
pollinating my earlobes. I say, Dress for the life you want
and wonder if I still believe in sarcasm
or second dates. My vision board is a solar system
where everyone I’ve ever loved is a habitable planet.
Men ask me about the color of my loneliness like it’s a satin thong, something I could push to the side.
I’ll say, I don’t answer questions that make me feel naked.
I’ll say, Put on your 3D glasses. Stare
at my body like a solar eclipse.
I’m so golden, so fleeting it hurts.
bo
At the bar where they lit our drinks on fire like a performance piece, you told me all the art you’d seen was already torched. Overworked, burnt at the edges and unable to be salvaged. Ready for consumption like a bloodless steak. I called you The Curator in text messages before we ever met. You used to love looking at paintings until you met rich people who stored them in climate-controlled units they’d never visit. It became your job to talk to them about Basquiat and baseball. I used to start every day like the cherry poised on a spoon in our public sculpture park – hearty, stem bent heavenward. I carried my student ID in my wallet through my 20s so I could get into museums for free. Until a staff member said, That’s not you and I knew she was right. The laminate had peeled away from my face. People online complained it now cost 20 bucks just to step out in public. The cherry was flown to New York for a year to be repainted. On dates, I sometimes disassociated, imagining myself as a stainless steel orb stuffed into the stomach of a small aircraft. Only five ancient experts in a faraway city could replicate my shade of red. Or, I imagined myself as the spoon, an outstretched, waiting surface. Nights at the park, kids would climb it and an omnipresent voice would come over the intercom to say, No playing on the art no touching the art no sitting on the art. I wanted to rip the spoon from its soil and go sprinting down the streets in search of the biggest bowl of cereal. I wanted to believe spoons sprouted naturally from the ground like surreal silver flowers. If I swung from the spoon, someone would remove me. I had outgrown gentle announcements and forgiveness. When you moved to San Francisco, you entered a painting I couldn’t see. A fuzzy landscape of endless, unclimbable hills. Flames licking their greenery. I realized I’d been using you all along to work my way into the poem. It felt better than beginning with the man who kicked a stoic Aphrodite feet away from me, screaming, Bitch bitch bitch. Better than remembering the murals replaced by billboards. The one advertising fentanyl tests read, Is it real or are you dead? Better than the sun like a torch and any symbol I tried to find in scorching.
When I Start to Feel Hopeless, I Buy String Lights from Home Goods
and wrap them around my porch,
an orbit of radiant arms. I flip the switch
and picture my mind as a light bulb.
Yellow is the most visible color from a distance,
the way people I barely knew once called me brilliant –
sharp, like the cut of a diamond. I want an Earth
that fits on my finger while I lay under
this jaundiced, endless stretch of stars.
My best friend reads to us about supernovas:
explosions, how the sky might collapse in on itself.
This night reminds them of selling telescopes one summer,
a temporary lens to gaze through while they charted a future
big as Jupiter. Now, the world feels as small
as the Starbucks lot in our suburban hometown.
When you extinguish, you are colorless.
We shop for sheets of glow-in-the-dark stars.
We read our horoscopes to feel closer to the moon.
I’m swiping on Tinder for an Aquarius
or an astronaut. Give me love so otherworldly
it feels like instant shipping.
Its’s very millennial to wear this much yellow, a man smirks
at my mustard sweater, the sparkly, plastic bumble bees
pollinating my earlobes. I say, Dress for the life you want
and wonder if I still believe in sarcasm
or second dates. My vision board is a solar system
where everyone I’ve ever loved is a habitable planet.
Men ask me about the color of my loneliness like it’s a satin thong, something I could push to the side.
I’ll say, I don’t answer questions that make me feel naked.
I’ll say, Put on your 3D glasses. Stare
at my body like a solar eclipse.
I’m so golden, so fleeting it hurts.
bo
Copyright © November 2024 Kara Lewis
Kara Lewis is a poet and editor based in Minneapolis and Kansas City. Her
work has appeared or is forthcoming in Permafrost, The Pinch, The
Louisville Review, Poetry South, Rogue Agent, SWWIM, and elsewhere. She is
a two-time Best of the Net nominee. You can follow her and her writing on
Instagram @kararaylew.
work has appeared or is forthcoming in Permafrost, The Pinch, The
Louisville Review, Poetry South, Rogue Agent, SWWIM, and elsewhere. She is
a two-time Best of the Net nominee. You can follow her and her writing on
Instagram @kararaylew.
