Lubbock

by Kenzie Allen

The meteor shower. The above ground pool. Those early days
of my parents’ affair when they visited each others’ families and
made nice. Years later, asking the universe
for a different kind of man. Whispering
stars, oh you stars
of the songs that make our each heart move,
you three-cut time, bring me a man, a darling
with a ranch
or a means
and let him also be
kind. Sky big like that
you stare long enough to welcome
meteors, which do not break up quiet
as the everything, which say nothing to you
as the last. Sky big like that
you can’t pick out
individual stars.
Each is a crisp
silence.

Kenzie Allen is a descendant of the Oneida Tribe of Indians of Wisconsin and was born in West Texas. She is a graduate of the Helen Zell Writers’ Program at the University of Michigan. Her work has previously appeared or is forthcoming in Sonora Review, The Iowa Review, Drunken Boat, SOFTBLOW, Apogee, Boston Review and other venues, and she is managing editor of the Anthropoid collective. She lives in Norway.