First love he’s all into winter sports and gels his hair and keeps getting in trouble,
keeps watering the yard for the hiss of the hose, loves my twisted braids for waves tonight,
like how in a dispersive prism material dispersion causes color to refract at angles, splitting
white light for a rainbow, or so say my notes atop a cherry desk of personal letters, near a
ring of keys, as I am part-owner of things I can’t understand, always drinking diet air, always
finding real is hunger in my name, the other anagram, always as in physics, cheerleading,
erect as Nero, I work with normal force (Fn), like a gummi lollipop on a flexible stick,
making my stretch public and out of places to adorn, I’ve a jewel right in the center
and ribbons like the tail end of regret right before it disappears.
Lauren Hilger is the author of Lady Be Good (CCM, 2016.) Named a Nadya Aisenberg Fellow in poetry from the MacDowell Colony, she has also received fellowships from the Hambidge Center and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in BOMB, Harvard Review online, Kenyon Review online, The Threepenny Review, West Branch, and elsewhere. She serves as a poetry editor for No Tokens
