I had three poems in the book read,
because I mostly wanted to read you new poems.
But so I'm thinking about this poem
right now, because it gives me a lot of grief.
And I have a very weird relationship with this poem,
so I'm going to own it and read it.
You have to re-love your poems, I think.
You have to decide that you love them again.
Love is like an act, right?
So you have to act on that.
I'm going to love this poem again.
"Katherine with the lazy eye.
Short.
And not a good poet."
This morning, I heard you were found
in your McDonald's uniform.
I heard it while I was visiting a lake town, where empty woodsy
highways turn into waterside drives.
I'd forgotten my toothbrush and was brushing my teeth
with one finger.
A friend who didn't know you said he'd heard it like this.
"You know Katherine.
Short.
With the lazy eye.
Poet.
Not a very good one.
Yeah, well, she died."
The blue on that lake isn't so frank.
It fogs off into the horizon like Styrofoam.
The picnic table is full of white people.
I asked them where the coffee is.
They say at Meijer.
I wonder if you thought about getting out of Detroit.
When you read at the open mike, you'd point across the street
at McDonald's and tell us to come see you.
Katherine with the lazy eye, short, and not a good poet.
I guess I almost cried.
I don't know why, because I didn't like you.
This is the first time I remembered your name.
I didn't like how you followed around a married man,
that your poems sucked, and that I figured they
were all about the married man.
But sometimes you reminded me of myself, boy crazy.
That sometimes I think people just
don't tell me that I'm kind of, well, slow.
Katherine with the lazy eye, short, and not a good poet.
I didn't like that your lazy eye was always looking at me,
that you called me by my name.
I didn't like you since the first time I saw you
at McDonald's.
You had a mop, and you were letting some homeless dude
flirt with you.
I wondered then if you thought that was the best you could do.
I wondered then if it was.
Katherine with the lazy eye, short, and not a good poet.
You were too silly to wind up dead in an abandoned building.
I didn't like you because what was I supposed to tell you?
What?
Don't let them look at you like that, Katherine.
Don't let them get you alone.
Katherine with a lazy eye, short, and not a good poet.
What was I supposed to say to you?
You don't get to laugh like that, like nothing's
going to get you.
Not everyone will forgive the slow girl.
Katherine with the fucked up eye, short, poetry sucked,
must have knew better.
I avoided you in the hallway.
I avoided you in lunch line.
I avoided you at the lake.
I avoided you.
My lazy eye.
Katherine with one hideous eye.
Shit.
Poetry for boys again.
You should have been immune.
You were supposed to be a cartoon.
Your body was supposed to be as twisted as it was going to get.
Short, and not a good poet.
Katherine with no eye no more, I avoided you,
hated it when you said my name.
I really want to leave Detroit.
Katherine with the lazy, short, not a good poet, and shit.
Somewhere someone has already asked what was she like,
and a woman has brought out her wallet and said, "This is her.
This is my beautiful baby."