Maureen Kingston lives and works in eastern Nebraska (US). She is an assistant editor at The Centrifugal Eye. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Constellations, Emerge Literary Journal, Gone Lawn, Humber Pie (UK), Psychic Meatloaf, The Meadowland Review, Rufous City Review, Stone Highway Review, Terrain.org and Wild Orphan (UK).

The Key Machine

To preserve the formatting, this poem has been published as a pdf.
Read The Key Machine here.


A Demigoddess Takes Pity

the nightmare vapor rises from his apartment to mine=draws me to him=our bodies
orbit in perigee=so close I can feel the air shift as his machete’s broad blade hacks
ghost vines=slays the demon canopy=& I wonder what wildness he’s holding
back=holding in

the mist condenses=bastes him=& he jerks in the undergrowth=if he were a lobster I
might band his claws=protect him from himself=but he isn’t=& I can only stand by
helpless as he labors with his quarried script=its feral chant urging him to die=die

I crack open my plumeria egg=place its yolk-yellow star atop his terrarium sky=attempt
by strobe to distract the Fates from their solemn song=to rupture their relentless tempo
with my light-driven ahem