This selection, chosen by Guest Curator Genevieve Pfeiffer, is from Still Life by Kimberly Ann Priest, released by [Pank] Books in 2020.
Content warning for pedophilia
my pedophile times all my future orgasms
if he says we have time it is the shape of the glass // how it is blown with air // how the glassblower covers its mouth and handles its bulb // how light is a word for knowledge / weight / and touch // how all are invisible // and if I believe it is time it is the bubble / the oxygenated seed that rises to the surface im-perfecting the whole shape // a welt / a blemish / a seam // but if he tells me it is not time / then table salt sifts slowly through the slender neck of the hourglass turned over // then over / then over again // whispering / relenting
Kimberly Ann Priest is the author of Slaughter the One Bird, finalist for the American Best Book Awards, as well as chapbooks The Optimist Shelters in Place, Parrot Flower, and still life. Winner of the New American Press 2019 Heartland Poetry Prize, her work has appeared in North Dakota Quarterly, Salamander, Slipstream, The Berkeley Poetry Review, EcoTheo, Borderlands and other journals. She is an associate poetry editor for the Nimrod International Journal of Prose and Poetry and assistant professor at Michigan State University.
