MITIGATION
sky turns inside out like shining
a flashlight down a mouth
humming memory
I buy a muzzle for
cold plunge into
another canker sore
my optic blur makes
the night occur cosmic
sometimes all I want
is one quiet walk
when I don’t inspect
closely enough
I think it’s a choice
to miss
the feeling with texture
that rock in my shoe
PRIZE
soft pretzel with a view
Crossgate rooftop
new low: solo bowling
hope the joke doesn’t come true
May birthday
12hr shift and Monday
2 Mexican Cokes
‘Having a Frank O’Hara poem with you’
I read it when I feel like
a flood
2am dedication
covering the dark
Cincinnati with cumbia
charmful Reuse Hub
PSA to a room
of one
plateau to AC
no bad dreams only robbery
I try holding captive
the sharp quality
of the sky before growing
an edge
before the mice
announced the building
ineffective even if
harmless and sincere
matryoshka in reverse
Mississippi John Hurt on CD
Trachtenburg family
egg slideshow
usurp of awe that’s the
Alain de Botton lecture
teacher pupil
vice versa
pu’er smells like horse
no more tea trees I say
how do they make tea
tree oil you say
mutual confusion
first time cactus
guajillo echo
Grace’s coyote song
a bovine ottoman
to gauze the gaping
ordinary that everything
reduced to
a room I need
to be locked in
but I go
have my collapsed
lung of suncaked
circles
because the cost
is that it bleeds through
Sodade by self-Portuguese
geese studies
my library card
in your pocket
Japanese grocery
Pikachu on wax
‘enjoyable’ in kanji
nothing is a prize
thank you thank you thank you
grateful plastic
warm mackerel
‘cash’ over ‘money’
small spine hiding
modestly in my teeth
Casey Harloe (she/they) lives in Cincinnati. I’M SO BRIGHT AND LONELY TONIGHT is her first chapbook. She leads writing workshops at Household Books.