my asshole, and why I keep checking its horoscope why my secret identity is a factory-reject breast pump why I only feel close to my ancestors when I eat an apple on a church stoop the grave I’m digging with a golden shovel, cursing the bend of soft metal why I keep getting blackout drunk on rain and everclear why I invited everyone to my open air wake and gave out my problems as favors the self-portraits I paint of the devil turning his back on me why the only love song I can hear is an apology why the end of the world keeps writing me love letters the slash fic I write of museums and mountains why the garden I planted grows nothing but unsolicited medical advice why I forward her bill to the manic pixie dreamboy who hasn’t thought about me since 2014 how I survive, when in every alternate timeline I’m already dead — FRANCES KLEIN
Frances Klein (she/her) is an Alaskan poet and teacher writing at the intersection of disability and gender. She is the 2022 winner of the Robert Golden Poetry Prize, and the author of the chapbooks New and Permanent (Blanket Sea 2022) and The Best Secret (Bottlecap Press 2022). Klein currently serves as assistant editor of Southern Humanities Review.