KRYSTAL LANGUELL

Good Clean Fun Is the Most Radical Thing in this World

A motif like a blue-clad goose
confirms I existed because I saw

the design in years that otherwise
I primarily do not remember

Rock candy at the quilt show
says more about taste than it does aesthetics

Do you think they wanted to?
Do you think they knew how?

The tower of song was passed down
and then run into the ground

Different writing
Concern in the park

You can stay mad if that's what you want
Heroes don't complain

I got a ticket for talking on the phone while driving
I was talking to my grandmother

Returning to the songs
I find some shadows there

More about the innocence than the experience
Any mature fool could see

He put a target on my back
Another one for my little collection

Wishful Thinking Poem

i.
There's a sentence I'm trying to remember
that goes something like
the future is bright and limitless.
It was said at a terrible moment,
invited a tightening of the screws,
nothing electrical to it.
One 1/8th inch welt to show for
repurposing the cam
when the right response
would've been hopelessness.

ii.
I want to address the same matters,
but as vigilante in a leather vest
threatening a partial analogy
to engineer an image so complete
a reader is bruised by its transfer.
No compromise on completeness
in favor of a sliver of light.
Cannot spare any
mutant leech also guilty
plus longer-tenured. Their comfort,
too, disrupted and not grateful
for it. Glued to their desk chairs.

Downloading the information
until it takes shape as a slap.

iii.
Some mechanical breakthroughs
to get at the truth since
emotion makes us inefficient
radios could reveal the cure
we've been too tired to invent.

And meanwhile some deletions
can be made. I have paid out
handwritten severance under
compulsion because the powers
always print more money for
class peers failing up. All the due
respect adds up to be light
as a feather. By all means. When
I hang up they want to hear
everything's fine. Finally, I can't
give the right answer.

iv.
To sever and be severed: ways
that cut a path or shook a frilly
leg passing through me. You think
you don't want to be left out until
the day serves a chirped reminder:
nothing you want is on the line.

The author of the resistor text
didn't make the connection.

To subsist and be a subsister:
a point I walked to the stadium
to make. They are still doing
the same nonsense, taking cabs
to coffeeshops to meet.
Strangers with monographs.
I am porous and influenced.
I am elsewhere, making theory.

v.
eat your heart out
below another threshold
in the switching yard
you never go to heaven
you did too much explaining
from the gangway
to the alley full
of bursting firecrackers

Fuck Around, Fuck Around

In a curated space
applaud my success,
which did not come
naturally at all.

My little fiefdom
where I explain touch. 

I can rarely stay in the mood for mockery
long enough to complete my point.

You'll want to thank again
and again, and periodically
as a throwback. An
event never dies in public.

It's possible people
avoid dealing with me.

Which secretly hurts my feelings
because what's particularly horrible
is I have the wrong vulnerability.

I got this job at the Description Institute.
I manage over a hundred summaries.
It is back-breaking labor.

Once upon a time, an overwhelmingly
real denizen in this area disappeared
into a hot hologram. I'm not even
missing the baby talk. It was more
musical than most people understood.

It's Not the Underworld, It's Something Else

The Mother's Dream:
Are you tired of understanding the limitations of others,
and would you like to be asked to understand their vast capability instead?

Atonement's Dream:
I had a vision of a tuxedo collar on a muscle tank
and in the act of failing to transform a garment
I received a broader message through the portal
directing me to gather up circles
Repetitive stress triggers my worry meridian
which was also permanently wounded in an accident
I needed additional pages to complete my answers on the form

A moment of connection around photography
and geology, but then it faded away again
Was it my responsibility to build this?
There will be an extraordinary breakage.

The Damaged Heart's Dream:
What am I after all?
On various occasions

Panic's Dream:
"sooner or later"
take emergency measures
long obsolete
The fact of restraint
The absence of restraint

I cried myself to sleep
the day my friend moved away.
A cold knife between the ribs
said a version of me would
fossilize. For days, I could not
swallow without pain.
White-tailed and bleeding.

The Mother's Dream:
Dream that my own mother never
told me she didn't want me
Dream of my innocence
What after all am I?
The man gasps dramatically.
Your deeper capability vexes
the pearl dealer, who runs.

Dream of the unfamiliar become
my area of expertise, of a cheap
jacket tightening like a blood
pressure cuff. I cut the vinyl
with manicure scissors.

Heavily

Lost in a new desert
trying to find a train to town
a sparrow in my hand
dead but it finds me later
I can't tell you because
I don't know

How our luggage got here
How I pulled a bee stinger
from your scalp a few weeks
after you left me
Not knowing weighs me down

We found a station
I thought Woodford Reserve
sounded cheap
I store my tiny thoughts
in a tiny explanation cloud
The dream didn't end there

Words can become tender
or suggest another plasticity
the droplets of a mood
the similarity of wet and red

We never do escape
we sit side by side
Another authority is
moving toward us
I pretend to sleep

Krystal Languell lives in Chicago. She is the author of four books of poetry, most recently Systems Thinking with Flowers, selected by Rae Armantrout as the winner of the first fonograf editions book contest, published in early 2022. She works for a family foundation and in her unpaid time participates in dynamic resource mobilization with and for recently-arrived and formerly-unhoused folks.