THREE POEMS

SPOTTED LANTERNFLIES OF SOHO

South of Houston’s a mouthful,

anyway. A great rustle of gas

drawn up from the underworld

and flung. Saved ones, we cross and turn

angles, dodge the wheeling crush

through white lanes, commute

through fog's belonging.

As in gyres, as in somewhere

to be, as in the labor of abbreviating

a neighborhood. Sun in our eyes,

we look down: the invaders

have been lined up for execution.

A species everyone knew to end

by word-of-mouth and online forums

now stepped-on, stepped-around,

discarded petals cleaved to reveal

flashy hindwings’

ornamental litter. See the pretty duty

of extinction. See that every year,

a neighborhood gains a cross-street there,

or loses one. Even for the quiet gentry of insects

who sought cobblestone over stonefruit,

cradled by someone’s eye just in the moment

before dispatching.

Bedding

We walk our childhood homes

in sleep. Not to say that terrible things

happened there. Just mildew in fractures

along the birdbath’s empty end. Blue objects,

newspapers, fabrics I’ve worried

between my fingers, never float

or cast shadows. I hear no gunshots. You tell me

I no longer grind my teeth.

When I wake hours before the thrushes,

your hand spasms between my shoulders

as a fledgling, wet and upturned.

Each year, we wear our comfort to tatters.

APPRAISAL

Opalish ring unearthed from the floorboards:

I know instantly what belongs to you. Tarnished

& filthy as my face behind yours in the bathroom mirror,

the yellowing pillow I kept tucked on a shelf

for nights when you did not long for home,

nights when we brushed one another’s teeth,

muscles limp from liquor. I think this place

has retained something small of you

as soil holds on tight to water before

releasing it a little less of itself

and dirtier. You witnessed the neighborhood

for every season but this one, late-June

mulberries mixing wine for whole families of vermin.

Friend, I wanted everything to be yours,

so I pressed my city into your palm

like an unclean charm. I figure the ring

abandoned your finger in slumber, leaving

no word in its wake. I pull it on and off and on

index, middle, ring, pinky, thumb: dumb

trick of retrieval. Somewhere down south,

you are singing your song of the desert to someone

like a precious, false stone.

Kate Meadows is a poet and essayist living in Brooklyn. She writes on topics of desire, delusion, and life in the city. While she currently works in the commercial art world, she salutes her years in the restaurant industry as the managing editor for the hospitality-themed publication 86 Logic. Her poems have been published or are forthcoming in Scalawag, Southern Cultures, Terror House, and ellipsis... She is currently a 2024 Brooklyn Poets mentee.