Kate Polak
———–for Xiao Fengxian
Ephemeral love is perhaps red dust, difficult
to calm once it’s risen. I loved him and he
died, so the story goes and goes and off went
my white lilies and elegiac verses and off
went whatever I’d said in his revolutionary ear.
My name doesn’t pass many red lips, just
as they are to what I’ve never been. I wanted
more for him, wound up without a mind
and took my pig liver purple heart back home
and wore black and never loved again.
Kate Polak does not currently want to be found. After books of scholarship and publication in such magazines as DIAGRAM, Miracle Monocle, McSweeney’s, Drunk Monkeys, and Sheila-na-Gig, she has absconded to locales unknown and continues to live a life of crime. She can be summoned by walking widdershins around a loaf of sourdough bread, a wedge of Parmesan, and a glass of wine while reciting Megan Thee Stallion’s hook to “Whenever.”