Kristin Garth: 2 Poems

Target, Today

Blonde college guy in Target met my eye,
and I did not consider it’s because
of my lavender velvet sundress, my
DD’s, both cursed and blessed. I saw
the backpack bulged, affected gait. I held
my breath and stood in place, eyes racing to
the nearest door, just in case, I’m compelled 
to run from guns, another man like you,
who’s livid with the world and through. These words 
sound dramatic but just yesterday some young
man shot eleven people. It occurred
ten minutes from this place.  Baggage we
take 
to places we learn, laugh, shop, even pray; 
like you, I carried in Target, today.

Occupational Hazard

When you’re a stripper in a Bible Belt
small southern town and your house is burned down
one more Friday night spent half naked, knelt 
before men like them — these firemen who found
a dead kitten inside a closet where 
they find accelerant, they will not be
reverent when they say, you still there,
to one another — could be so many 
men; maybe angry what she took from them.
Occupational hazard in a life like that.
Though two suspects are your landlord, ex-boyfriend
not customers, they blame the death of this cat,
casually, upon the work you do 
escaping what your parents did to you.

Kristin Garth is a Pushcart, Best of the Net & Rhysling nominated poet from Pensacola and a sonnet stalker. Her sonnets have stalked magazines like Five: 2: One, Yes, Glass, Luna Luna, Occulum, Drunk Monkeys, and other places. She is the author of eleven books of poetry including Pink Plastic House (Maverick Duck Press), Puritan U (Rhythm & Bones Press) and Candy Cigarette Womanchild Noir (The Hedgehog Poetry Press) and the forthcoming Flutter: Southern Gothic Fever Dream (TwistiT Press, 2020) and Dewy Decimals (Arkay Artists, 2020). Follow her on Twitter and her website.