All in by Kate Northrop

Three Men

SWWIM Every Day
by Kate Northrop

by Kate Northrop



‍ ‍(oil on canvas)‍ ‍


In the first man, your gaze can go on
though he is still there,
his face a grid-like exactness,
white tidy tie.

In the second and third, your gaze can go on.
In the far right corner,
filled with
how clothes billow—

This is the feeling of a time:
so smooth it could spill,
ambulance lights flashing
by the side of the road.

In the three men
are ends of aisles in grocery stores
and how I miss everyone
being more or less alive.

In the three men
is a back porch,
the eaves dripping, rain here and there
patting the tree leaves.

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Kate Northrop's recent collections are Homewrecker (New Letters, Vol 88, 2022) and cuntstruck (C & R Press, 2017). Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day, AGNI, American Poetry Review, Blackbird, Plume, Sugar Poetry Review, Terrain.org, and Virginia Quarterly Review. She is a recipient of a NY Times Book Review Editor's Choice, the Paumanok Award, Wick Poetry Award, Jeanette Haien Ballard award and fellowships from Yaddo, MacDowell and Jentel.

Glassfish

SWWIM Every Day
by Kate Northrop

by Kate Northrop



At the bottom of the aquarium,
I am arranged like a note.

At the bottom of the aquarium,
tucked by a pile of loot, I hang

while voices stop overhead,
then vanish. Constellations, floors

soaring with stars, mean nothing
to me, nothing the loaded trees

pinpointing a street. But this
knocking on walls? This

is my heart, this my fury
turned low inside, like sunlight

stuck afternoons in red drapes.

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Kate Northrop's recent poetry collections are Homewrecker (New Letters vol. 88, 2022) and cuntstruck (C & R Press, 2017). New poems are forthcoming in MER, Terrain.org and Glacier. She teaches at the University of Wyoming.

Ghost Ghazal

SWWIM Every Day
by Kate Northrop

by Kate Northrop



Agree with me the rumble of a subway coming in
can be a baby, and the first note in the hush

of a concert hall, the bright name of a baby.
Walking to the bathroom at night, seeing

floorboards rise, this, of course, is a baby, and the sound
of pool balls breaking up pool balls? Like locks down the hall

clicking, one after another, into place? Baby, baby. Babies themselves
are not babies, not their carriages, their clinging

infant fingers, but that they often surface,
creaturely, into my dreams? Four horses gathered

in a window and then, on the counter, a sudden baby?
It’s true. Just this morning, walking with Nell, we saw a horse

standing in a pasture, flicking away flies. I clucked, clucked,
held out my hand and I called here, Baby.

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Kate Northrop's recent poetry collections are Homewrecker (New Letters vol. 88, 2022) and cuntstruck (C & R Press, 2017). Northrop teaches at the University of Wyoming. Currently she is learning to embroider.