Zimmerman House
Inner being. Garage added on - a larger stomach
to devour with. Look, my intestines, the divertive
machinations of my hair. Wig, rather. The roof
my flip-top, basement my anchor, where the proud
father goes to cool down from a
tirade, where the children go to cool
down from the heat. They bring freezies,
bump careless against the stairlift,
dog an eager beggar close behind.
Single windows don my bedrooms—
roof my being,
proud my being,
replaced daughter on the corner with
the outer walls of time. Proudly the style of the time. Proudly today’s hottest trends
in a little shimmy ranch. Proudly on the corner of
proud & proud & proud &
Heart Rot
heart rot, n: a fungal disease in trees that rots the whole from within.
Imagine my heart as a lemon grove:
these sour chambers throb their prickled skin —
torch-guts, beacon-guts, rabid for a fell
sweetness. Yellow-dot heart wrung of its red
reveals these trees and fruits, garish green, sun-
marrow. Citron as a rubber duck, bath-
brew, hanging pendulous as noose fodder,
branches choking rinds to this puckered hue —
Yellow, color of plastic childhood
Yellow of the first snowdrops, heads poking
out of the crown of snow-melt, ochre
of those final deciduous stragglers.
Show-me shade of all summer evenings
dipped in the haze of cricket-thleep thleep thleep —
Have I mentioned? I fucking hate lemons.
Kelsey Zimmerman is a writer and visual artist from Michigan currently living in Iowa. A 2021 Best of the Net Nominee, her work is published or forthcoming in The Indianapolis Review, Nurture: A Literary Journal, and Ghost City Review. You can find her on the web at www.kelseyzimmerman.com.
Twitter: @kelseypz
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