30g & Other Poems

30g

At the diner I count to thirty
at least three times then divide
by the ratio at which my body
currently rejects all food
as my pancreas is just a hot fleshy
thing that given up any accountability
of keeping me alive, so i ask
the liquid, fifth most expensive
in the world, after LSD and Chanel
No. 5, to let me relish
in sweet corner booth and a milkshake
creamy and cold on a spring afternoon,
where i wonder when it all
became so much work
to nourish my body
in a way that must done
everyday
in a way, to exist.

When Your Ice Cream Comes with Eyes

The wind, the fog, the dying
cable cars drunk on rust
the city empty, strung out
streets of all our forgotten
company the windows shuttered
the what’s left hung in
two to be shuttled, packed
up and sent out for our glistening

as the city lives
by the bridge with the
visiting, the sweets for eyes,
the pier sings saltwater tiki bars
corndogs, sea lions groveling
painted horses, eyes sinister & circling
those striped tent antique carousels
haunted by a tinny tone
the mirror maze swirling up
horror shows of endless yous for
visiting each fine establishment
the shrimp shack,  the top hat
each jewelry store diamond drenched
in the dayboarding, the weekenders
the left by noon, the new sweatshirt

the morning brings another fog
to wash again these city walls

1849

The rocky opening an adit
to earth underneath where gold
glows in metallic dust down
tunnel tracks twisting to molten core
where men dig with silver picks
to find greedy glory of stolen lands
proposing prosperity in proclamations
of budding boomtowns built on mistaken bulbs
of wild onion made of metal for gloried
fortunes never sleep, bragging rights
down coastal streets and the papers
screamed, “the mother lode!”
flocking forty-niners to the shore
to build shanties out of scraps of ships
& the preachers screeched from barrel pulpits
said, let the glowing steamships come
rising through the fog, all luckstruck ones.

Like Kids Who Live Here

Drive like your
kids live here! Sigh like
your kids live here! Vote
like your kids live
here! (Have you
thought about how
your kids live here?) Scream
like kids that live
here! Panic
because kids live here! Sew
it up, kids can’t live here.

Kate Kenney

Katie Kenney studied publishing at University of Denver's Publishing Institute and received her MFA in Creative Writing from Western Washington University. Her poems have appeared in Grub Street Literary Magazine, Moss Puppy Magazine, and Merion West among others. She lives in New England with her cat Mabel.