by KT Herr

It's #tbt! Enjoy this great one from SWWIMEvery Day's archives!

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I thought I had exhausted all my metaphors: various prey; coins
inserted slant, jamming vending machines; cartoon hand over cartoon
mouth. I studied grim histories of hysterical patients, listened
to accounts of fish who change their sex to breed. I thought I knew all
there is to know about glass: a viscous liquid forced to acquiesce
to rigidity. If I could learn the posture well enough I’d know
how to unlearn it. I practiced exhaustively. I’m practicing now,
today, as I sit smoking. Next door, workmen are lowering a warped
slab of half-inch plywood from the building’s distant roof. Above, one rotates
a winch while below another gathers slack, taming the spent plywood’s
wild twists. A third man stands, watches the rough plank pirouette past several
windows, bracing to receive the spinning scrap. You think I’m telling you
the story of the plank; how it feels to be trussed, grappled over. But I
am the third man: waiting for some purpose to come into my hands.

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KT Herr (they/she) is a queer writer, stepparent, and curious person with recent work appearing in Foglifter, The Massachusetts Review, Black Warrior Review, and as winner of the 2023 American Literary Review Award in Poetry, among others. KT is a Four Way Books board member, a poetry editor at Gulf Coast, and an Inprint C. Glenn Cambor Fellow in critical poetics at the University of Houston.

by KT Herr

I thought I had exhausted all my metaphors: various prey; coins

inserted slant, jamming vending machines; cartoon hand over cartoon

mouth. I studied grim histories of hysterical patients, listened

to accounts of fish who change their sex to breed. I thought I knew what all

there is to know about glass: a viscous liquid forced to acquiesce

to rigidity. If I could learn the posture well enough I’d know

how to unlearn it. I practiced exhaustively. I was practicing

today as I sat smoking. Next door three men were lowering a door-

sized piece of plywood from the building’s distant roof. Above, one reversed

a winch while below another gathered slack, taming the spent plywood’s

wild twists. A third man stood, watched the plank pirouette toward several windows,

waited for the swinging scrap to reach the ground. You think I’m telling you

the story of the plank; how it feels to be trussed, grappled over. But

I am the third man, waiting for some purpose to come into my hands.

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KT Herr is or was: queer poet, songwriter, and grilled cheese enthusiast; advisory board member for Write616; poetry editor for The 3288 Review; host of WYCE’s Electric Poetry; Retort Slam finalist; writing workshop facilitator; MFA candidate in poetry at Sarah Lawrence College (2020). Her poems have been published with Pilgrimage Magazine, Punch Drunk Press, and Francis House, and her nonfiction has appeared in Goat’s Milk Magazine. She lives in Yonkers with someone else’s cat.