Human disaster is contagious, so I’m left
alone, like I thought I wanted. Self-pity says
no one wants a sinking ship
of a woman, rafting on hate for how much
what she knows she keeps taking. No heartbreak
or inspiration to sell as end goal,
rarely beauty. Instead, indictment
and unrelenting grief, pain and identifying
purpose, blame and sour shame—all
wounds that won’t heal. World won’t
let the stitches set before landing
another blow—no entertaining real
solutions. Outside the self the reckoning
bulks up like a recurrent tumor. Or a monstera
flown free of its old planter. I read on the Internet
that plants are brains. Quiet pulses of green
unseen except by time lapse. I can imagine their depression
when one of them dies. Living the tragedy of being
ahead of one’s time while predicting
possible futures ain’t for the faint-hearted,
just the foolish. I can’t help how my brain wires
catastrophic knowing. What happens when alchemy fails
all the way? When medicines and glyphosate combine
over time with moonshine mistakes
to finally trip the liver’s limits? Remember me as kind
and messy, a brighter contradiction than even I
could handle. If I didn’t live
as hard as I could have, disaster self and all, I’d still
wish you all a thousand times better.
alone, like I thought I wanted. Self-pity says
no one wants a sinking ship
of a woman, rafting on hate for how much
what she knows she keeps taking. No heartbreak
or inspiration to sell as end goal,
rarely beauty. Instead, indictment
and unrelenting grief, pain and identifying
purpose, blame and sour shame—all
wounds that won’t heal. World won’t
let the stitches set before landing
another blow—no entertaining real
solutions. Outside the self the reckoning
bulks up like a recurrent tumor. Or a monstera
flown free of its old planter. I read on the Internet
that plants are brains. Quiet pulses of green
unseen except by time lapse. I can imagine their depression
when one of them dies. Living the tragedy of being
ahead of one’s time while predicting
possible futures ain’t for the faint-hearted,
just the foolish. I can’t help how my brain wires
catastrophic knowing. What happens when alchemy fails
all the way? When medicines and glyphosate combine
over time with moonshine mistakes
to finally trip the liver’s limits? Remember me as kind
and messy, a brighter contradiction than even I
could handle. If I didn’t live
as hard as I could have, disaster self and all, I’d still
wish you all a thousand times better.
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Khadijah Queen is the author of eight books of poetry and prose, including Anodyne (Tin House 2020), winner of the William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America. In 2025 the Foundation for Contemporary Arts recognized Queen’s work with the Cy Twombly Award for Poetry. Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea, a memoir about her time in the U.S. Navy alongside short histories of maritime women, was published by Legacy Lit/Hachette in August 2025.
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