The Sunday Poet: Karen Locascio

Karen Locascio is a graduate of the MFA program at UMass, Boston, where she won an Academy of American Poets prize. Her work has appeared in Paper Nautilus, Cider Press Review, and Window Cat Press, among others, and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her debut collection, May All My Wounds Be Mortal, won the first Ron Schreiber Poetry Prize and will be published by Hanging Loose Press in early 2017. In her spare time, Karen enjoys genealogy research and fantasy football, and reads submissions for Spry Literary Journal. Originally from New Jersey, Karen currently lives in Dorchester.

The Fool

I dream you swoop in

on wings I can’t see. You burn

off like dust on a candle,

my skeleton radiating

hypnotic from my breastbone.

You’re better as visitation

or morning sickness,

and me as a padded room,

a concavity.

Flip the shell.

Pick a card, any card.

I’ll break a plate

then the sky. Rain, rain…

The sperm is rain,

the rain is sperm.

The ovum’s the only human cell

visible to the naked eye.

I’ve got cavities in my ovaries

and sperm in my mouth.

When you tell me to leave, you mean it

half the time. You slap me

on the ass, chain-smoking,

sink full of empties.