Natural Law
My friend assures me it’s natural
to feel helpless, then follows me
to the bar. I’m a natural leader
(Hendrick’s if you have it) and
I, she tells me, am born to act.
I stand in a classroom and nod,
I say good point when the point
is scraped from a site infested
with flash banner ads. I wash
dishes and linoleum and sing
little songs, I blot out bombs
and legislative farce, I’m what
is called a triple threat. Ladies,
gentlemen (make it a double),
I’m the dog in the meme, flames
bright and high. I believe men
destroy girls every day but we
made it out of the 2000s alive,
we took the 2000s like diet pills
and they whispered secrets to us
about math: the numbers are
just made up. A zero is a two,
a felony is a zero, any children
demolished by us aren’t real.
My friend is trying to get me
to remember this time I can’t
remember since I wasn’t there
(I’ll take the check). Who cares
for memory, I say, and erase it,
smudging it gray and tearing it
through. Like the time we saw
ducks mating in the park, how
the noise of flapping grew loud
when the mallard submerged
the female’s head. A stranger
called out to us, It’s natural, so
we looked each other in the eyes
and believed. That’s not the same
as what’s happening, she insists,
but we are who we have been.
Emily Kingery (she/her) is the author of Invasives (Finishing Line Press, 2023). Her work appears widely in journals and has been selected for multiple honors and awards. She teaches creative writing and literature at St. Ambrose University and is an emeritus member of the Board of Directors at the Midwest Writing Center, a non-profit supporting writers in the Quad Cities community.