KIT FRICK

BITTER LAKE

I could talk about the smell but. I’d rather listen to gulls. How their cry can be haunting in flight [searchers] it carries with you. I’ve read birds can see beyond the visible spectrum [human spectrum]. I sit on the hood of a parked car. I sit like I’m in yoga, like I could sit like this all day. No one compliments my posture or yells hey get off my car. There are magnetic fields hidden in plain sight. I try to sense one. If the light off this bitter lake is ultraviolet. If the eye could be a window to anywhere.
 

BATTERY

It is possible for hands to float like water lilies. [August, poolside.] There are women here who fan themselves for hours. I’d rather greet the sun. What is this talk of foundation. Stable or unstable. Bolted or anchors aweigh. I am belly-pressed to the concrete edge. I place my palms on the surface. This talk of departure. Someone’s father is a father again in Nevada. Someone refuses to miss him. It’s possible for hands to float away if you let them. Some have made it to the ocean. [If you swallow the gossip.] Some find enduring calm.
 

BOG

It was February and everything tinted green around the edges. [Like new growth or sea glass, but sadder.] I was wearing my sadglasses. I couldn’t take them off. I was filled with bitter melon and river water. I couldn’t spit it out. Everybody had an opinion. I had a closet of miracle cures. Some were shaped like paper birds and some arrived like oil tankers in the night. [Nothing worked.] It was hard to see myself clearly. The mirror was tinted green around the edges. Gone was so finite and impossible to swallow. [Like sadness or sea glass.] It sat like a dead thing on my tongue. I wanted to leave on a tanker in the night. I wanted nothing clearly.
 

BIO

KIT FRICK is currently studying in the MFA program in Creative Writing at Syracuse University. She has poems recently published in or forthcoming from CutBank; PANK magazine; Foothill; Georgetown Review; No, Dear; Stone Canoe; Jellyfish; and elsewhere. Kit is a Poetry Editor for Salt Hill Journal and is an Associate Editor for Black Lawrence Press, where she edits the small press newsletter Sapling.