This selection, chosen by Managing Editor Krista Cox, is from Bad Animal by Kathryn Bratt-Pfotenhauer (Riot in your Throat Press 2023).
The Contract
After Sylvia Plath
God, were I more like You
I might care less about the world.
Might care more instead about the safe
chalk mess of children
on the sidewalk
coloring their small, incredible lives
green and pink and running home
with hands dusted in glitter.
I address the hypothetical infants:
My children, my children—
how I wish the world for them.
I wish them candles, a light
that doesn’t falter in the deadpan
drum of the future, death darkening
into a faded spot on an old shirt.
Any creator worth their salt
has an obligation to uphold,
has opted into an agreement.
It is why I am terrified of
my children, my children—
I owe them a future, like how You
up there owe me the benefit
of Your creation. I do not ask much.
I do not ask much at all. I only ask that
You honor the contract.
Kathryn Bratt-Pfotenhauer is the author of the poetry collection Bad Animal (Riot in Your Throat, 2023) and the chapbook Small Geometries (Ethel, 2023). The recipient of a Pushcart Prize, her poetry has been published in The Missouri Review, The Adroit Journal, and others. Her fiction has been published/is forthcoming in Giving Room Magazine and The Masters Review. She is a graduate of Syracuse University’s MFA program in Poetry and is a doctoral student in Comparative Literature at New York University.
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