Lisa Olstein

APPARENT WINNER

Once the moon came close, brushed
its rough cheek to my face but before

my eyes could adjust to the light 
spilling gas-like it was retreating again

into a more distant orbit. Is this where
I go when I don’t want to hear

the news or what passes for its fevered
breath? Did I earn this morning’s calm?

No, that’s the medicine I took
to stop the thoughts realistic enough

but impossible with which to sleep.
A real-life boogeyman followed me home

last night—one woman, two children—
down my own dark street. Later

something about the way with her bare hands 
the chef on TV caressed the naked inside

of the slaughtered sow made watching
its body come apart into cuts all right

except for the head because the line 
drawn in me is apparently the thoughts.

I don’t want to take another being’s life
force for my own if I don't need to, is what

I said to my mother over the phone
after communing with an ant late

on a different long-ago night. I was
beautifully high. All the neighborhood cats

had come out to see me. But still
I had to eat and so I ate

and since I could I ate well.
Let’s not make this about petty differences.

Certain suffering limited my options. 
There's so much suffering. Sometimes

I cause it. Sometimes I have no choice
but to let it suckle at my breast

my pinky in a pinch—it's so hungry. 
Why are you such a bad person

too often I find myself wanting
to say. Also, I love you. 

The toddler wearing a leash 
designed to look like a backpack

so his mother might feel less self-conscious
has brought his horse figurines 

to see the horses in their muddy pasture 
on the other side of the soft-edged fence

today. I watch them through the window
of this country vet waiting room

as a burly man carries his sick dog in 
and I look for them again when

he carries his dead dog out, but this time
all I count is vulture-vulture-sparrow-

hawk until the tech taps my arm
and says, you can take your cat.

LISA OLSTEIN is the author of five poetry collections from Copper Canyon Press: Dream Apartment (2023), Late Empire (2017), Little Stranger (2013), Lost Alphabet (2009), and Radio Crackling, Radio Gone (2006). Her nonfiction includes Pain Studies (Bellevue Literary Press 2020), a book-length lyric essay; and Climate (Essay Press, 2022), an exchange of epistolary essays with the poet Julie Carr. Olstein's honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Lannan Residency Fellowship, a Pushcart Prize, and The Writers League of Texas Discovery Award.