Are You Normal Tonight?
The arterial beauty of Florida is alive in all of its obesity.
And the sequin-sellers are doing good business
east of Granada Boulevard.
____
The sad-eyed woman's ultrasound image—all dirty blur of gray and ambiguous genitalia—sits
lovingly electric on your newsfeed.
And the neighbor with his disorder you invented is going out tonight.
____
The starlet will eat a sandwich and Kevin will push the joke
too far—the vomit, the bobby pins—
and that's OK tonight.
And your mother, with her rough hands, her quiet advice, has walked
along the sidewalk knowing how cold a wooden house can feel,
wondering whose soft, strange lips she could kiss.
Feature Date
- July 23, 2019
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Copyright © 2019 by Libby Burton
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission.
May 2019
Chicago, Illinois
Editor
Adrian Matejka
Creative Director and Exhibitions Co-curator
Fred Sasaki
Senior Editor
Lindsay Garbutt
Associate Editor
Holly Amos
Associate Editor
Angela Flores
Founded in Chicago by Harriet Monroe in 1912, Poetry is the oldest monthly devoted to verse in the English-speaking world. Harriet Monroe’s “Open Door” policy, set forth in Volume I of the magazine, remains the most succinct statement of Poetry’s mission: to print the best poetry written today, in whatever style, genre, or approach.
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