WHAT’S LOVE GOT TO DO WITH IT
Except as the engine,
the absence
of lace, puddling
below the window.
Eulogy: an edgewise
word. What’s the point
of freedom
of speech
if I’m not open
to any conversation?
The question is something
I can pose, a deeper lunge
I hold
as long as I want
as loud as I want.
There’s a name
for it, to kiss
who she couldn’t, then stick
to my guns. There’s a phrase
that fits: I don’t believe in either-or
but in hindsight
she could have been either.
K.T. Billey’s debut poetry collection Vulgar Mechanics is a finalist for Fordham Lincoln Center’s Poets Out Loud Prize and being rendered into Spanish by poet Soledad Marambio, translator of Anne Carson’s “The Glass Essay” (Cuadro de Tiza Ediciones). Originally from rural Alberta, Canada, Billey won Vallum‘s 2015 Poetry Prize. Poems have appeared in journals such as CutBank, Denver Quarterly, The New Orleans Review, and Prelude. An assistant editor for Asymptote, her translations from Icelandic and Spanish have appeared or are forthcoming in The Harvard Review, Circumference, the Council for European Studies’ CritcCom, and Palabras Errantes. In addition to arts and culture essays, she is writing an autobiographical comedy about a woman working at a sex shop in cowboy country. See more at ktbilley.com.