My boss killed a lamb for me.
Or did I kill a lamb for the boss?
So long ago, these risks to bloom
in the waste of creation.
Decades in which one’s title was contingent.
For a spell, I was the girl with no social
boundaries at the laundromat. Unladylike,
an affectionate feral in high school,
home of label after label on mistakes
that looked more natural than the model.
The Greater Fool Theory, retinal art, minor wheel truing—
who cares now? School amounted to the chance
to learn more to earn less. Thank god
for Goodwill, the Dollar Store, for Lingerie Superstore
or as Greg said, Less dress for less.
To get through those years I had to become
a wildcatter, prevention specialist, a combination
manger and entertainment center, a chipper-away
at the Sabbath, a national champion slippery elm.
Yes, I went vegan. To think like a hero, to astonish,
to not need anything—all this took a while
to put my arms around. If one grew up
in Novelty, Ohio, if one had no central tendency,
even a vanity kit could seem abstract.
Edacious as it was, the path answered to my quest
for shame, for the vertiginous sense of falling
in place. And for joy, the joy of orienteering.
It’s like food.
KATHLEEN WINTER is the author of Transformer, I will not kick my friends, and Nostalgia for the Criminal Past. Her poems have appeared in The New Republic, New Statesman, The Adroit Journal, Field, Sixth Finch, Diode, and Yale Review. Awards include the Rochelle Ratner Memorial Prize, Ralph Johnston Fellowship, and Poetry Society of America The Writer Magazine/Emily Dickinson Award. Kathleen was granted fellowships by the James Merrill House, Sewanee Writers’ Conference, Cill Rialaig, and the Maison Dora Maar.
