four poems
by Jade Kleiner
Lithium Toxicity
through a squint my eyes glean that
they dragged off the port-a-potty.
my colon, that pizza-slaked serpent,
refuses to wiggle predictably.
my eyes droop. my soul droops,
but my toes in their shoes do not.
every toe is agitated, ready to run
before the piss takes me.
I have peed every forty five minutes
for three months. This includes sleeping.
a cricket climbs on to my knee
and I see the song coiled up in her legs.
further along in the goose poop,
six year olds dribble soccer balls,
which are kicked and kicked
until they arrive, snared, still,
in a patchy mesh net,
then retrieved,
then kicked and kicked again.
Nook
Light from yesterday’s stars bounces off the pond, where tadpoles eagerly munch towards tomorrow’s body. Croaks land on a log that was once a tree and is now a brothel for snails.
Across the pond: two eyes, snout, then mouth, molar, incisor, throat, stomach, colon, anus, toenail.. I can see the wolf’s pupils not aimed at me, outlets of a mind for eating. A breeze continues through my hair then dies on the wetness of her tongue, which is absorbing, in carefully minding slurps, dirt from the nook of the neck of her pup. My left foot decides to flee, and squashes an errant Coca-Cola can into the mud with a half-wet, half-metal crunkle.
Behind the wolf, the rest of the breeze finishes a dandelion into many wafting and fruitful pieces.
Shrimped
My bootstep, heels projected
down a flicker-lit alleyway,
soundwaves wasted on trash.
My breath congeals in the cold
then dissipates into dusk.
The cessation of a rustle
answers my boots,
and parting the silence
a raccoon rises from splendor,
ravenous and rapt,
pupils seizing me
through a froth of cataracts,
gray chin adorned
in blueing shrimp paste:
she growls, and that growl
dies in my ears,
and she shows those teeth,
where shellfish end.
The light bulb above spasms,
and each flicker yields
a just different animal—
my eyes cling to every
iteration of her whiskers
but she goes meek,
and I’m looking
at a different animal
In the Doctor’s Waiting Room
Fear in the loudness of blood
discoursing my ears
Fear in the laces constricting
my shoes into my feet
fear in my hands
before and after they exist
fear swaddled up like a young squirrel
in the fibers of my wallet
dreaming between credit cards
nudging the cold and raised shapes
describing my name
fear,
in my bladder,
fear leaving my bladder,
after ten days,
having joined a pond,
in the throats of fish
BIO: Jade Kleiner is rooted in New England. Among other places, her poetry can be found in Trampoline and manywor(I)ds, her haiku in Cold Moon Journal, and her fiction in Bright Flash Literary Review. She is transgender and is currently revising her utopian novella, Ship of Plenty. She has practiced in the Plum Village Tradition since 2020.