Four Poems by Kit Willett

 

Burnout 

 

A creative, face down on couch, 
nose pressed into cushion.  
Breathing slow and deep, face  

 

turns, covered in insomniac’s  
sleep lines to drag eyes open.  
Piles of unread books are a fort;  

 

taking even one would risk  
structural integrity. Cooking  
dinner would risk structural  

 

integrity. Movement would risk  
it. Eye half-rubbed. Trudge  
to bathroom to shower for heat.  

 

Phone alarm reminds water  
intake. And look at toothbrush  
with contempt. Scroll. Scroll. Scroll. 

Slowly 

 

You taught him the potency 
of the word ‘slowly’. 
Before you, how would he know 
what it meant 
for you to run your hand 
across his arm slowly, 
for you to touch the small  
of his back slowly, 
for you to bring your face to his 
and kiss him slowly? 

Something that resembles Redon 

 

The vase sits in the middle of the canvas.  

Those flowers were arranged yesterday,  

and you can remember they were beautiful.  

 

Now, they have begun to slowly fall apart.  

There is still something that you find striking  

about the composition; it is truly balanced.  

And, the flowers are still perky and bright.  

 

It is just that, and you were there when he did it,  

he crammed them into the vase in a rush.  

 

He was never a patient man. He jabbed  

and shoved stalk after stalk into this pot,  

and now, the dandelions have fallen out.  

 

He went to bed for the night, and they fell,  

and now they are immobilised in his image:  

an in-between moment of how he set them  

and how he found them: an imagined medium.  

 

And you even offered to fix them. He laughed 

and said that without those damned dandelions,  

the cornflowers were far more prominent.  

 

You said that the poppies had started to droop 

and that you still prefer his earlier work. 

Untitled 

 

Today, I think I earned it, 

that this word has been planted 

deep inside me, 

that I belong with you. 

 

It is not something to be 

earned, a sexuality; 

it is something gifted, 

something claimed. 

 

And yet, I feel that I 

have earned it— 

now, on this Tuesday afternoon.

Kit Willett is a bisexual poet, English teacher, and executive editor of the Aotearoa poetry journal Tarot. His debut poetry collection, Dying of the Light, was published by Wipf and Stock imprint Resource Publications in 2022.