Francine Witte
I Turn, and Another Year
Is about to pop up on the screen, telling me
to go ahead and grab a beer and this ought to be
good. Ha! You said that last year, universe
And look where we are. Not that plagues and
terror regimes haven’t dotted up our whole stupid
history. This is the job of the human,
to start out lost and find the sign pointed home.
But if I could speak for all seven billion of us
I’d guess that maybe we’d be happy for one quiet night.
No victories on the horizon, no being the top
of the food chain, because, in truth, we really
aren’t. You take a bear, any bear, for example,
give him a rifle, a house, a debit card. Guaranteed
that before you turn around again, he’s got you
sprawled on his cave floor. You are nothing now
but trophy, your mouth wide enough to hold
an apple, a gasp, a wish for another good year.
Parking Lots are Where They Keep the Sheep Now
After the cold stopped being cold. After we had to stop burning things. Burning anything. After
we gave up our cars. After the sheep wandered into the town looking for food that wasn’t dry as
hard pearls. After we tried to eat the sheep but cooking got too hot and we were not strong
enough to pull apart their sinew. After we looked at one another seven billion times and said it’s
you, no no, it’s you. After we didn’t even need the wool because we didn’t need sweaters and
also, we could cut off our own hair to knit them with if that were ever to happen. After we
pushed the leftover car shells down to the dry patch where the lake used to be and left them to
rust or die or whatever it is that cars do. After the sheep kept banging their noses against the
window screens because maybe they thought we had coldness or food when we didn’t have
either. After we roped them together and walked them down to the parking lots with the open storefronts that were gaping like mouths that can’t even scream anymore. After we left the sheep
and never spoke of them again. After, even we, became after.
Things
My life is filled with things. Red things, square things. Things I sit on. Things to help me eat.
Things are everywhere and since they are, I can’t escape them. One time I tried. Tried giving up things for an hour. Said to myself, don’t look, don’t touch. I tried turning myself into air, a
breeze, a waft across a lavender room. When that didn’t work, because how could it, I realized
the things had won. Only one way to go. I had to become a thing. I sat down on my sofa-thing. I called out some words, which are also a thing. Told the world to come get me, use me to scrape a potato, use me to paint a wall. Do whatever it takes to make the want of me grow in your eyes.
For me to be the thing you need.
Francine Witte’s poetry and fiction have appeared in Smokelong Quarterly, Wigleaf, Mid-American Review, Passages North, and many others. Her latest books are Dressed All Wrong for This (Blue Light Press,) The Way of the Wind (AdHoc fiction,) and (The Theory of Flesh.) Her chapbook, The Cake, The Smoke, The Moon (flash fiction) will be published by ELJ September, 2021. She lives in NYC.