#kate duffy

[natureofdust]

Morning He looks at me like I’ve sat on this secret for a lifetime I don’t know what I’m hiding, but I know it’s something that laughs when tickled. I play twenty questions with myself while I drink from the faucet. Lately He holds me in his suitcase until I calm down. My eager ears sucking in smells of stale air washed down with his dirty jeans. He looks at me over tired eyes. Ignored me so well when I told him he didn’t hang the picture level. Lit up again. This time in front of you. Think this time I said everything right and backwards. Is it kind to say That I really dislike children these days. If I wanted to think with my heart I would Let you talk to me that way, maybe I would also hum myself to sleep. I kept saying I was the problem. I never learned praise that didn’t answer its own question. Lit up again. This time in front of you. Think this time you asked me to do it. -"cornered," kate duffy

[natureofdust]

This war-time favorite:

I’ve entered a stage of life

            where it’s acceptable for me to grieve when it’s not a done deal

            and I like it. When I move,

                        it’s because I’m saying phrases

            and when the phrases stop, the words are even slower. Here’s something I

                        like about you: it makes sense for me to suck my teeth.

                        And I arrive further back. I see suds where I’m

            supposed to see feathers. There’s a flavor I

            assigned to your name. I like to smile at everyone’s friends

                        so that they know I’m not playing with anyone

                                                and I back them into a corner

            capture the flag.

- life affirming behavior, kate duffy

[natureofdust]

Tonight, I will think of strange things

            and be all I can be

            while not moving.

            There is nothing delicate

about how I will break your neck with my voice

when I flash freeze every lie in the middle of the hallway.

            Tonight, you will scream my name from your room,

            measuring five feet, by six feet, by two inches of patience and I will act

like I heard nothing at all. Jacinda, I say.

You are alone now.

There is no one coming.

There is no one calling.

Your room smells like flat ironed hair and raisins.

You have too many things that I had to pack away in plastic bins.

And I’m not sorry I didn’t answer the phone.

I’m leaving you here to rest now so you can be quiet.

Walking to my car, I count back from twelve and I can see my breath. I don’t

            notice you yelling two floors up. My coat gets caught on a branch

            and I am relieved

                        to have left the freezer door open.

-kate duffy, "massachusetts ave after 7pm"

[natureofdust]

She is supine.

And yet, mysteriously, her eyes are on the highway. Some say

they have been travelling for miles without stopping. Stop, she told me,

I need to know you’re coming back tomorrow. And then I run

            and she is no longer mine. And then I run and

                        she is pulling out her teeth with my hands.  When I was younger,

I thought that I would help

 someone out one day. She thought that meant I would come home.

Washing my face,

I forget her.

Her smile is fastened on the back of my head.

Still, I run.

-kate duffy, "exits from a program"

[natureofdust]

I always thought

            why are the adults rushing

            and why am I not taller than my father. I

                        simply tell everyone who I see

            stay beautiful for her or else. Or else

            whatever, Lillian. We go way back, I told her, and

I write because it fills me with enough poison to be real

and I dose you, Lillian, because goddamn.

 The marrow, fuck the marrow, it goes

            soft by the time we arrive. I am a bitter moth

and my kingdom is dusty.

-kate duffy, "leech"

[natureofdust]

— opens her ribcage for just one moment

and I’m unimpressed again. Like she was with me everyday

for weeks or something. It’s not like everything I’m saying

is catching fire! There are ashes falling from her

 hemline, but she’s fraying again. Her mouth is a crowded

tunnel in rush hour where I can feel the fluorescence lighting my face in all

the worst ways, my B movie profile slapped across the box

office tonight for all of Los Angeles to see. This is how

embarrassment becomes me. This is how I want her to see her

name in lights. I want the cheapest Christmas garland you can

find and I want her to see that they misspelled everything

and I want her to snap an ankle

when she sees

me coming.

-Kate Duffy, “for art”

[natureofdust]

Even if I sound incredibly clean,

anything you say

 to me now is going out the window

with the bathwater in tow. There’s an official guide

to me that I read once in the stacks

of the family library, which

gave precise

                        instructions on how I work. It wasn’t bullshit

                        either. I am literally lying. Every time we

            kiss, I am searching for a way to home improve.

-"How I Imagine Divorce," Kate Duffy

[natureofdust]

Lily like a fine wine.

She talks in circles

                        because she is trying to lose me

            and this is the easiest way – gaga in the light, as the corn maze

                        unwinds. I look less like I know what I am talking about

                                    and more

 like a woman. Whatever crosses the walls,

            crosses us. Whatever is it, we get

                        to keep. I can’t think of a better birthday

                        present than your consent in a jar.

There is a cork fishing for compliments at the bottom.