CHRISTINE KANOWNIK
awareness carousel
just reworded the words to make them
for women, I guess
I cunt the sky and bounce along the spider’s web
so biggest and most filled with sulfur
what is a terror that isn’t all of it at once at twice
she’s living next door, singing a happy song
shepherding the “meet candace” along
she says “meet candace” “I’m candance”
“it is good to be” “alive” and “aware and candace”
the life I live is filled with pockmarks take
the triumph of life and my three-person’s god
I want both versions, the one you had first & last
when starry-eyed cunts meet it isn’t romantic
it is a coronation
unhappy men gulp when thinking
about all the crowned cunts filling up like Miss USA
Miss Ecuador Missus Equator Miss Miss They Miss and She Miss
do you know who the prince here is
do you know who the prince here is
do you know who the prince here is
do you know where the prince there is
underneath these tassels, I’m expected to live
no one ever once did worry about this time of night
even if we were relentless
even if we were attached, incessantly
no one once was worried
or shed a drop of worryness
worry like hard-crown
dispelling concern out to our
subjects subjugating
no never and never once
it exists worryless and night-quite
dark here and with a darkening
set of sky-objects and the sky
subject/object agreement all
fabulously agreed upon in our
state of excitement our state
of ceaseless un-worry no never
not even thinking of a worry
the queens that we are the queens
of night and pitch and inky even
when the dark does rain ink
down on us not of worry what
to toil over if not love of
night and desire to think unclouded
by the worry-clouds that erase
the night-ink the writing that is
a song sung by we-do-not-know-
whom but why would we
worry about singership when
the sky itself is ink-soup
drink the night drink the night
up there is night soup for all of
us which is why we worry not
the night is endless please drink
Christine Kanownik is a poet, editor, and host of FIELD TRIP Detroit. She is the author of two books of poetry: HEAD (Trembling Pillow Press, 2018) and King of Pain (Monk Books, 2016). Blood Bath, her latest chapbook, is out from Philadelphia horror press, Cul-de-Sac of Blood. Her poetry can be found in FENCE, Bone Bouquet, DIAGRAM, and b l u sh lit, among others.
