Dumb River.....................Caitlyn Klum

Disappointed Child

CAITLYN KLUM (AB’21)

I can’t open the umbrella in my dream. Can’t put my paper boat in the shallow end, my teeth in anything cold, my hamster, or sister, in the wild. I can’t scrape beauty from a web, or ever leave that wreckage behind me. Half my name is alone in heaven. I am visited without permission, yet I’ll never sleep. I find lost figures bent in my bathtub, or on the last smeared subway car, or squeamish in a white asylum, or slipping on their blood. It is inappropriate to laugh my particular laugh. It is inappropriate to spit to wound, to touch a flame to the center of a flower, to pray like composing a letter, to speak and not be heard, to overfeed a big, fat catfish. I’m in love— I think. I ache like all angles at once. What others calls shy is a begging for impossible speed, for languid evenings, for one more time.

The word “bone” repeated and its hollow shudder. No one knows to dust for angels, and we never wholly come home, or learn how to keep company, or put missing in its place. The taste of sole arugula, bitter oil in peanut butter, tincture of metal, cold water, chocolate on an early morning tongue. How fast this sun nosedives! Heat, warm mucus in each ear. I can’t hold enough of you to remember— know that I try all wet, fertile spaces and am careful not to squander breath for memories. I can’t imagine singing well, or living a long life. No matter, there will always be swimmers kicking up water in the deep end.

The Gardener

I love a song but cannot weather its singer. Call me little river, dumb river,

thing. I ride the night train so often it becomes an ocean, bruise-black,

like a fighter becomes the beat, becomes the bottom of the sea.

When I play my lyre, I hit one string en route to another, each rugged sound

rushing to rid the note. That’s why I build my home, warm, sexed, and unfeeling.

Can you tell me about spring, now? Number each sprout emerging

like a small surrender from under your great big gardening boots.

I’m in love— I think. I ache like all angles at once. What others calls shy is a begging for impossible speed, for languid evenings, for one more time. The word “bone” repeated and its hollow shudder. No one knows to dust for angels, and we never wholly come home, or learn how to keep company, or put missing in its place. The taste of sole arugula, bitter oil in peanut butter, tincture of metal, cold water, chocolate on an early morning tongue. How fast this sun nosedives! Heat, warm mucus in each ear. I can’t hold enough of you to remember— know that I try all wet, fertile spaces and am careful not to squander breath for memories. I can’t imagine singing well, or living a long life. No matter, there will always be swimmers kicking up water in the deep end.