Kristin Lueke is a writer, creative strategist and fierce advocate for dignity, joy and collective action.

i have been ashamed. for the way i crave 
a little violence.

bring me lord a herd of teeth big as buffalo to wrap around this apple.
i ask so little, really—eight hours for sleep, eight hours outside, eight hours
for what i will.

dear [animal i love],

i am afraid i have become [a terrorsome thing].

kindness isn’t enough i need
to burn down a courthouse

i listen for god's voice. demand less clarity than i used to. 
when it rains, for instance, in mid-october i ask is it raining? 

i am willing to let what i love surprise me & grateful, these days, 
to be wrong. but i do know a birch from an aspen. 

you ask me to be patient. i paint an old bookshelf
& remember my posture, the way blossoms become
one last thing. how some nights now you don’t sleep
even if your mind is good.

every road here needs changing,
outrageous names, how quick we are to call a woman
what she is to a pervert, a process, an empire. don’t ever
call me mother, ma’am, i am not yours. i belong to love

i have no use for hunger. come. 
bring me my knife.

the season came
to cut my hair & make another mother. i stole
my heart into my throat & made myself a king.

you will kill another calathea. sorry. you will take two sudafed with your tea & then you will sort out the future. you’ll nap. you will grieve like a feral orchid. nothing quite right & remarkable, living. you could name a dozen more animals. be a river. repent. learn how to draw a magnificent horse.

i don't just leave anything. not well enough
alone, not a question i could answer. i keep
what's mine collected.

i could make a room holy out of anything earthly.
they don’t teach you that at princeton. they don’t say
what to say when that man makes his meticulous exit.

can you imagine? an hour
to do nothing. count chickens,
blessings, fucks left to give,
stretch the body long, let
the body do the the living.

i do not mean a metaphor. i fed him salmon 
in september & astonished him with weight. 
told him buy land, buy a truck, better yet, 
buy nothing. watch birds & sleep 
four thousand hours. i

in the thick of a row i tell my beloved 
i would like to kick his head off. 

the only star we know to have cataclysmed pine nuts
into existence—bringing close six songs i can hear
where i’m sitting—lies down quiet this evening,
unlike everyone else.

i wasn't born patient—i made me this way. believing
the black birds show me. it took believing. when i say
i mean faith. i mean—could you look at me now and not
say miraculous? i call you just the same. my dove.