1 poem
by Kelly Clare
Kelly Clare is an artist and writer with an MFA in sculpture from the University of Iowa. Her visual and literary work appears and is forthcoming in Second Factory, New Delta Review, Tagvverk, and Hobart.
Dear Kaylie,
I hope you are growing mint. My mother writes that the moon is “HUGE” and “pink.” She sends me a video of a robot cleaning the floor of a pool. I think about the fearful safety of animatronic help. Do you think about the fearful safety of animatronic help? Or how the decoy duck, the concrete goose and two toads, feel friendly? My favorite animals are comic garden fixtures, my favorite people are stationary, or encased in a fluorescent glow. My whole life is like “no sudden moves!” On the screen, my student makes an installation that is just the soda bottles he bought when the grocery ran out of water. The coke and spite are just hanging out, enacting our lives, and the title is as long as a paragraph. My stomach is allergic to all pants buttons and N is always calling a doctor about their lungs and the doctor has become a small voice reverberating in the speaker of the app on the phone. That the spring air continues to feel like sex is reassuring.