Katherine
Meehan

How do you wake up everyday not hating everyone;

I rebuke this headache, my regrets. I wish for nothing

more than the perceptible, which is too much already—

the best day of my life has been and gone, has brought

a child streaking naked down the garden path

up and down, up and down, in the early sun.

It is hard work, learning to be happy like life

needed to be rectified—as if it had been mutated

like dogs, like the sunflowers near Pripyat,

like we could not withstand our dose of shit

and smile also—in the sanctum regnum of the toy school house,

I wanted to save everything, Death’s feathered headband

lay in the dress-up box, so adorable my heart hurt—

The feral pack survives, the flowers rinse

cesium from the water—it could be here, why not?

Oh Lambikin, Oh Honeybear, I am powerless

essentially, the sweet calm of baby animals is

never as persuasive as it ought to be.