Camilla Keenan Koch

The secretness of the body-
The private self was born in the way
she rouses herself, physically, from her reverie.
...

This moment much more than any other:
A broken man, debilitated,
failing to stand, and
she helps him to his feet
...

I spoke about laughter with a man I loved
(in the modern way)
He texted me to say
laughter is violent
...

The tiniest moments of being alive
what makes a circle
the way an edge appears
thinking of an apple
...

Everything we perceive is added to make
Each of us
Sensations of moments, consumed by I
...

Having time to kill was always a sort of burden
Right?
But now I miss the times when there were fewer ways to kill it
Maybe we're happier
...

My dreams have been worse since I met her
She is an exposed, flayed nerve
She singes me
She is a bloody gashlike wound
...

if I could do it all again
I'd do it much less seriously
I would concentrate my education
more practically
...

Before the last assay in the quest for an undergraduate degree
from a prestigious university
English Language and Literature
Take a long pause
...

I heard a couple arguing on the stairs
outside our apartment
But I turn into the doorway and try to surprise you
‘I heard you! ’
...

The first poem I wrote
that delighted me
I wanted to capture the texture of language
in colors that prove
...

Provisions are always made
The ache is always bequeathed
Like Bast, it prowls through the heart
Until it finds the throne you made for it, lovingly
...

I'm happy you have money
I'm glad you died
(He's dead, right?)
with money
...

My lover once told me
“I love you, you make the day seem so long.”
and so, with wounded vanity,
but because of his name
...

With the stickiness of children on my hands
Sunning in a high-fenced courtyard
my open sky hemmed by chattering apartments
that sound as if they ought to be
...

The number of people on this planet is infinite
Disregard sustainability
Let's quantify it;
If there are 6 billion of us, can we not always create one more
...

Guy de Maupassant constructs these delicate little tales
out of gossamer, I'm told
Nothing ever happens
It's the story of someone telling a story
...

he brings the dark
and I watch it fall
light that is sad and sick
dying in his hand
...

Orphans, I’m afraid.
Hating showers with the kind of resentment
Usually reserved for the absence of god
Or, more rightly,
...

Saturday was painful
I wept in the arms of my friend
Over lost people, and lost things
Saturday evening I try to make mischief
...