The polyurethane made us white
as bloated fish. As quick-dry glue-
spiked hair. In summer we peeled
and put gyms in our tongues. Boys
ringed their eyes like ours and we
made little raccoon families, kits
who raided CD stores. Old wives
of politicians said grow up so we
spat Mad Dog on their lawns.
Grew like dot-coms. Put in calls
for fisheye lens and let our
ear holes close. The crisis turned
to building windmills in the new
millennium. They were clean-
bladed, fiercely white and still
the wives blamed wind for killing
birds. They flew and courted death.
They left their eggs to rot in trees.
Emily Kingery is an English professor at St. Ambrose University and the author of Invasives (Finishing Line Press, forthcoming), a semi-finalist in the New Women’s Voices Series. Her work appears widely in journals, including Birdcoat Quarterly, Blood Orange Review, GASHER, Image, New Ohio Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, Plainsongs, Raleigh Review, and Sidereal, among others. She was a finalist for the 2022 Laureate Prize and has been a chapbook finalist at Harbor Editions and Thirty West Publishing House, as well as the recipient of honors and awards in both poetry and prose at Eastern Iowa Review, Iron Horse Literary Review, Midway Journal, Quarter After Eight, and Small Orange. She serves on the Board of Directors at the Midwest Writing Center, a non-profit supporting writers in the Quad Cities community.
