Katherine Riegel

Ordinary Breathing

I am trying
to live my ordinary
life like an astronaut
or an orchestra conductor,
open to the complex music
heavenly bodies make.
I want a dignified life
but too much of ordinariness
is indignity: standing in line,
cleaning the toilet,
railing at the tv
while politicians grind
kindness into the earth
like spent cigarettes. All
I really know is this:
birds still fly
through the ordinary
air, while inside
my breath fogs the glass.

---

Application Letter #2059

I will be your workhorse.
I will pull a wagon full of bricks
into town and let the neighbor’s lost toddler
play under my belly without moving
my dinner-plate-sized hooves once.
 
If my co-workers and I are fireflies
trapped in a jar, I will lead them all
out the one big-enough hole in the lid
and fly for all I’m worth, and if I can’t
 
I’ll keep mixing chemicals
as long as I can to make the light last.
I won’t wear myself out
pulling and pulling on the rope
attached to Idea
 
when the well is surrounded
by thirsty people. If it’s simple
water we need, I’m your river-daughter.
I come from another century,
so I understand your need
 
for historians; but I grew up reading
science fiction, so I’m prepared
to lead time-travel tours as well.
I’m worth at least enough
 
for one trip to Switzerland, the cold
mountains lying on their backs
while I watch them through a picture window
dangling my feet in a hot tub. Won’t you
 
please let me be your taproot,
your sword-of-the-moment?
I’m no star burning hot in someone else’s galaxy,
glittering to make you drool. Here’s
 
what I am, honestly: I’m the one
too busy looking where I put my feet
to notice all that flame and gas
moving over and past us both.
I’m the one ready to tend the wounds
of those who got too close, who trusted too much
in bright indifferent objects from the sky.




--
Katherine Riegel is the author of Letters to Colin Firth, which won the 2015 Sundress Publications Chapbook Competition, and two books of poetry: What the Mouth Was Made For and Castaway. Her poems and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in Brevity, The Lascaux Review, The Offing, Orion, Tin House and elsewhere. She is co-founder and poetry editor for Sweet: A Literary Confection.