Domesticated Tanka
You smell like clean goat,
sickening jacaranda.
We unpack a bowl
of fruit, blistered tomato,
limes rotten from too much love.
I rescue the soap
from the yard. Buckets, clothes pins,
a dildo. When the in-
side moved outside, I failed to
take into account the pain.
Just inside the door
you left me a pair of brass
balls you used to use your mouth
to slip in and out of my
body years ago. Remember?
I hope you will see
my ass pushed toward you across
the quilt made by our
mothers, as you scroll through your
phone and stare at young women.
Paintings on the wall
I never liked, but never
told you. You left, now
I tuck the sheets tight into
the mattress of emptiness.
I lay on our bed,
missives addressed to no one
rouses the hasty
thunderstorm, my hands find a
home inside myself, finally.
Kate Sweeney has poems most recently appearing in Northwest Review, Muzzle Magazine, Jetfuel Review & other places. Kate has a chapbook, The Oranges Will Still Grow Without US [Ethel 2022]. She is Marketing Director for The Adroit Journal & Word is Bond Reading Series and resides in Los Angeles.