Caduceus
Houses like eyeteeth west-end and the ex-wife
down the street, the son’s first job
every near miss becomes smaller
ice on electricity lines, crumbs on a black shirt
a line of vision only seen through dilated eyes.
When was the last time you let anyone
drive you, hold doors for you, fuss?
The attentiveness of it.
Remember the hard years. When darkness crept in.
You paid your bills, went to work, had your big ideas,
thought about sex so often it drove you
to near madness. Your wake of destruction.
The forests between the airport
and the town you live in, between one large city
and another, become a centralized blur
listening to rap music,
speeding like your life depends on it
to take you back to where you live
though you doubt it is home.
How, if you go fast enough, the teenager inside
feels the same, a hard you escaped.
You think of her breasts as you drive,
think of her nylons, the way her throat was delicate
but muscular, a python. You could have had
your way, couldn’t you? You always can
though something goes wrong at the finish
every time. You know better.
Lovers devour each other
only when timing becomes immeasurable,
the sorrow bigger than them both.
Caduceus
The way bodies curve into each other.
A desire, a start. Too many ways to say
the night goes on and on. Life is short and life is long.
The photograph of genitals comes through text message,
unwarranted but not exactly unwanted.
In the car she asks if you are married,
you say divorced. You say, from the cornfields
of a difficult Midwest childhood.
You say, my teen years were difficult.
Young adult life, difficult. Now, I am middle-aged.
Growing more beautiful by the day. What envy.
You imagine inside you a place to lie down and dream.
A vastness that tells you about how to deal with heartache.
We leave each other in brief replaced with day drinking and lovers,
roofing repairs and books to read in-between.
The winter is over in the South but there are places
where snow accumulates for many more months.
You remember those places vaguely now.
In my mind’s eye, I am above you walking to the bar,
a drone for your every move. I am above you as you
sex. I am above you as you are above you, watching
yourself make the worst decisions possible to satiate
the emptiness. I am above you while you think of me,
considering the brief days, wondering more about my life.
I am above you while you let your hair grow curly,
while you fret about students and existence,
your insatiable desire, the template of being misunderstood.
Maybe this is what it means to love at first sight,
a seed sown and rotted. I think of all the years
I was left undesired. The years the snow piled
as tall as the house. The years the corn didn’t grow
on time. And now, you desire me to a dead end.
How the curve grows and grows until bottomed-out.
Katie Jean Shinkle’s books and chapbooks include The Only Way Out is Through (YesYes Books, 2026) and Transference (winner of the 2024 Gasher Press Poetry Chapbook Prize, 2025). Other work has appeared in Another Last Call: Poems on Addiction and Deliverance (Sarabande Books), FLAUNT Magazine, The Nation, American Poetry Review, Gulf Coast, Hunger Mountain, Aquifer: The Florida Review Online, and elsewhere. Her work has received support from Lambda Literary and Ragdale, and she serves as co-poetry editor of DIAGRAM.