Four Poems|Katie Berger
Factory Night Shifts
My dad slept all day. I played the piano so quietly and slowly I heard the hammers hesitate before each note. And with my brother I fought for limbless GI Joe torsos in spitty whispers. Who controlled the remote controlled little: mute Ninja Turtles, mute Clarissa, mute coyote off a cliff, boomless flash of Acme. The buried shrapnel in my chest shifted when someone asked. Asked why I moved to that noisy city whose Interstate never stops singing with Subarus. See, in the little towns you can hear yourself think. You can hear the piano music if you stare at the sheet music long enough. You can hear the radio if it’s not drained of battery life. You can hear the clank of the chainlink gate from a mile away, a truck leaving the factory. You can smell the steel mill, the chicken plant, and the cattle yard all at once but to say this reeks is to wake up all the shift workers and send them blinking angry into the sun. I’d pull the string on the back of my talking Tweety bird: I love you, little buddy. Easier to blame the birds for making noise about love.
Forget the Stars
1.
The cherry punch drink mix giver of years of sour a sour somewhere between blood and the well at the campgrounds yet we never really camped all s’mores built by midnight no one slept someone was eaten by rage at raccoons or missing toilet paper some of us knew so easily how to breathe a cloud of bug spray into ourselves seconds before the silent treatment we’re going home early forget the stars
The day one of us added sugar to the drink mix each blaming the other for years of drinking vampire piss I slid my journals through the shredder until it jammed dumped them into grandma’s piano like confetti no one could know I once considered them all mean
2.
I sell the piano when I move to a new state I cannot read music in Florida or Maine I cannot change a tire or check the car for trailing oil I cannot break spaghetti over boiling water but I can read like old farmers with fingers licked to the wind looking for storms the rooms at funerals the silence between the paper of Christmas cards the soft lull of the last ribbon of gravy before the pop of a breaking dish say the meanest thing I will move to another state
The soft silver ‘70s garland the smell of mildew up from the basement every year a coil wound tighter and tidier around the tree set the scene a manger lined with tinsel peace on earth by way of lenticular Grinch ornament the tree a museum of what we haven’t thrown away
Cameron Fire
My brother calls
from his subdivision annoyed
with blue jays and his dog
chewing on the screened-in porch
that overlooks the mountains.
The hotel where he got married
now stands too close
to a fire called Cameron
and I remember
his constant cloud of arctic
deodorant between the shower
and his room, the plastic spiders
and army men, the floor
prickly and endless with them.
Or the microwave popcorn nights,
the singed snapped ribbon
of overwatched Star Wars tapes.
The high-ceilinged victory
march with medals
was his favorite scene.
Social Distancing
Wellness influencers are calling,
flip tarot cards to re-route
the Russian roulette.
Do I feel that feeling or nothing.
The things I used to say before
the times got unprecedented.
Now I hold everything close
to my bedroom. I brace for ascension
right when Jo’s monologue hits
in Little Women.
Lonely and women.
Ascension Day is called Kristi Himmelfartsdag
in Norway. Christ Sky Speed.
I miss Norway.
Oh god what if I’m Keanu Reeves
Winter. Much easier than scarves.
Photo by Akhil Lincoln on Unsplash
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