PUNK POETRY: If Time Doesn’t Exist, Then Nothing Exists But This Moment, Which Never Ends by Kait Quinn

Which is an alchemy of memory and words cinema

splattered across my film screen brain. Which is shots

of vodka in a college dorm room before crappy apartment

masquerades, followed by 3 a.m. Harry Potter binges

—when we're starved for home fries but settle

for childhood comfort, can't get the spins to stop.

Which is catching thumbprint frogs in the creek

behind Grandma and Grandpa's hill country house,

the neighbor's White Shepherd guiding us home while sticky

frog toes slap against our clam tight palms. Which is how

my heart fluttered when Cole kissed my sour candy mouth

at the Sugarland AMC and the boy on the yellow scooter

unlatched my hand from his ribcage to brush his lips

against my whiplashed knuckles at a downtown Austin

stoplight. Which is a home that curdles to a ghost

town if I stay too long in its heat. Which is why I can't

go home. Which is the happiest place on earth brimstoned

into hell. Which is a bonfire in Kip's backyard making

suburban lumber jacks out of us city kids. Which is turning

on the dark, pirouetting drunk in the oven light.

Which is picking a bouquet of Indian paintbrush

when everybody else wants bluebonnet.

Which is a recurring question that keeps me up at night:

why me, why me, why me?

--Kait Quinn