On the second year of under employment
I build a palace of gifts in my mind
I’d buy for you: Vuori sweatshirt, pants,
and a hat with a gift card tucked in.
I’d buy you a Weezer album on vinyl
with a turn table to play it, a massage
at a spa that smells like eucalyptus.
I’d buy you a box of pears individually
wrapped in gold foil like the kind
we once ate in that basement apartment
our first Christmas together. The juice
ran down our chins and we were spring
rain, honeybees, the rich soil holding
the planet up to the sun like a newborn.
–
Katie Kemple is the author of Love in the Key of COBRA (Iron Horse Literary Review) and Big Man (Chestnut Review Chapbooks). Her poems have appeared in or are forthcoming from Beloit Poetry Journal, Ploughshares, and One Art. She’s co-founder of thepoetryshop.com, an independent online poetry bookstore.