Tell Me How to Kill the Summer
/E. Kristin Anderson
(a golden shovel after Kesha)
Swing down into the roots in the road where I zip
pavement tight closed. I’ve long learned your
hands, how they reach into the mouth, press lip
to glass to river water—here I touch a pattern like
a paper doll. And I paint myself in honeysuckle, a
kiss ringing against the sin of dirt. See: a padlock
deep in the skin of the wild—we grow around it and
wear the iron as ornament. See how we come to meet
skinned knees open to the stinging air. You see me—
just another way to fill your slipped sky, a repertoire in
northern fever. Have you carried your silver past the
horizon, offered your fingers, each broken, bent back
through the gate? Tonight I volunteer as conduit with
twelve ribs cracked to hold the truth. I fuck with the
notion of promise, spill the spark of daydream, jack
it open with my body. Here the heat is a hopeful hell at
my feet—sanguine, secure—I am the wildflower, the
crow song, a fair throat to carry my heart in a jukebox.
E. Kristin Anderson is a poet and glitter enthusiast living mostly at a Starbucks somewhere in Austin, Texas. A Connecticut College alumna with a B.A. in Classical Studies, Kristin’s work has appeared in many magazines including The Texas Review, The Pinch, Barrelhouse Online, TriQuarterly, and FreezeRay Poetry. She is the editor of Come as You Are, an anthology of writing on 90s pop culture (Anomalous Press) and is the author of nine chapbooks of poetry including Pray Pray Pray: Poems I wrote to Prince in the middle of the night (Porkbelly Press), Fire in the Sky (Grey Book Press), 17 seventeen XVII (Grey Book Press), and Behind, All You’ve Got (Semiperfect Press). Kristin is a poetry reader at Cotton Xenomorph and an editorial assistant at Sugared Water. Once upon a time she worked the night shift at The New Yorker. Find her online at EKristinAnderson.com and on Twitter at @ek_anderson.
