Tag: Kristie Frederick Daugherty

Please by Kristie Frederick Daugherty

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Please
            (to my grandmother)

Put the number 40 on my back.
Let me run. Race away.

Cold tears on the paddock.
I’ve been weeping since June.

Stumbling around, no flashlight.
Seeing your face in every

unlit place, I’ve been
underneath cave after cave

trickles of water, formations
pushing up from the earth.

Tombstone. Graveyard.
Cemetery.

You were there
all of the times

I was in the back of the pack,
whipped to go faster.

You, my warm stable,
and my stable feedings.

How I bit into the spoon.
Feasts, apples, endless,

and your hand, patting my hand:
“You’re my good girl.”

I know you are at my end
of all of this,

whatever all of this
turns out to be:

when only a back porch light
remains flaming in my brain.

When more measures
would have been unkind,

we did not allow more tubes,
or let them break your legs.

Find a way to turn back.
The track is a circle.

Head toward the starting gate.
Come home.

*

Kristie Frederick Daugherty is a poet and a professor at the University of Evansville. She holds an MFA in Poetry from Vermont College of Fine Arts. She is also a PhD candidate in Literature/Criticism at the Indiana University of Pennsylvania. She is the editor of “Invisible Strings: 113 Poets Respond to the Songs of Taylor Swift” which was published in December 2024 from Random House. Find her online at www.kristiefrederickdaugherty.com

Illicit Affairs by Kristie Frederick Daugherty

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Illicit Affairs

Stop fucking around with me
and suggesting fresh watermelon
in the middle of winter.
Always wanting the fruits
that are out of season.
It was you who ate all
of my Rainier cherries last summer,
you fruit thief.
Their season is short
and they are up to nearly ten dollars
a pound. I saw pits under
your side of the bed when I looked
everywhere for my missing
red hoop earring at Christmas.
Thought the cat
might have dragged it under there.
I’m only saying this because
you will never read it.
I’m only breaking the fourth wall
because of how you
called me by my name
in a bedroom way that
you knew sounded like love,
texted my own name
to me over and over,
keeping me perched on
a windowsill of almost ripe.
The mistress of misdirections:
You must have eaten them
faster than you remember,
I did not touch them,
I’ve never cared for cherries.

*

Kristie Frederick Daugherty is a poet and a professor at the University of Evansville. She holds an MFA in Poetry from Vermont College of Fine Arts. She is also a PhD candidate in Literature/Criticism at the Indiana University of Pennsylvania. She is the editor of “Invisible Strings: 113 Poets Respond to the Songs of Taylor Swift” which was published in December 2024 from Random House. Find her online at www.kristiefrederickdaugherty.com