Housekeeping

In this jar is a dead bat.
Don’t answer the phone.
In this jar, a dead bat.
I don’t want to talk about my mother.
In this jar is a dead bat.
How many pills in how many days?
A dead bat.
The mind departs, returns, a tide,
a flock of starlings.
In this interval, cognition knits
its rent fabric.
In this jar, left in the bedroom on a shelf.
Don’t you dare
tell me you love me.
 
 
 
Kathleen Winter is the author of two poetry collections: I will not kick my friends, which won the 2017 Elixir Poetry Prize and was published in February 2018, and Nostalgia for the Criminal Past, which won the 2013 Texas Institute of Letters Bob Bush Memorial Award. She has received fellowships from the James Merrill House, Dora Maar House, Cill Rialaig Retreat, Vermont Studio Center, and the Dobie Paisano Ranch. Her poems have appeared in New Statesman, The New Republic, Tin House, Gulf Coast, Colorado Review, Volt, Poetry London and other journals.