How You Work and Other Poems

By Kait Quinn

How You Work

after Joan Osborne

The way snow lands
in an unflourished hush.

Tea kettle screams, hazes
kitchen tile like fog

tucks shore to sleep.
Such a normal thing:

clean sheets pulled
womb warm from the drier;

the house sparrow's warble;
the way a lung bloats,

deflates, distends again.
Moon works the tides.

Farmer works the soil.
Sun circles Earth on a loop.

This is how you work
on me.

If You’re Wondering if It’s Spring Yet in Minnesota

See last night's blizzard warning: one inch
of heavy snow every sixty minutes, forty to fifty
miles per hour winds; stay off the roads—whiteout
conditions. See this morning's snow stick to the city's
ribs, besting even the twelve-hundred-dollar,
two-stage Cub Cadet. See the sixteen-foot
branch in the neighbor's yard cut sidewalk in half,
spill into road. See the street sweepers swap sprayers
& brushes for plows, only just packed away for the season.

Fracture

Crystal ice cracks through my crimson crevices.
Icicled holly hangs haphazardly from the icy
bower, threatening at any moment to skewer
my heart the way January's tongue
punctures sternum. But solstice sun is setting.
Night will wane to wax our wintered hearts.
Longer days glisten gold on horizon, and I
am ever thawing on these quiet, unspoilt
mornings, fresh snow swollen and silvering
in moonlight interlude glow. One apricot-ripe,
lemon-squeezed dawn, we will wake to shoulders
aureate swathed, rainbows kaleidoscoped across
our undulating pupils. This is what we cling
clacking teeth to when winter's daggered peak
fractures our hope, tricks us shattered.

Kitchen Poem

Cold tile floor cradles my back, collects
my tears in geometric rivulets. Comfort
of yeast and spices, tomato sauce sputtering
on the stove, scintillating sizzlings, hypnotic
simmer. The oven's flame & whir warms
kitchen to a womb. The stove bulb beacons
—an ever present sun, stretched beyond dusk,
when I still can't call the ghosts like sesame
seeds from between my molars with garlic
& onion tongue.

I have found solace in the sifting of flour, 
scraped from the curves of a mixing
bowl, toss of vegetables in salt & olive
oil, simplicity of butter smeared
across bread & cinnamon sprinkled.
Then sugared. Then broiled.
Until everything hard & bitter 
marmalades across my tongue,
tenders between my teeth.

Kait Quinn (she/her) was born with salt in her wounds. She flushes the sting of living by writing poetry. She is the author of four poetry collections, and her work appears in Reed Magazine, Watershed Review, Chestnut Review, and elsewhere. She received first place in the 2022 John Calvin Rezmerski Memorial Grand Prize. Kait is an Editorial Associate at Yellow Arrow Publishing and a poetry reader for Black Fox Literary Magazine. She enjoys repetition, coffee shops, tattoos, and vegan breakfast. Kait lives in Minneapolis with her partner, their regal cat, and their very polite Aussie mix. Find her at kaitquinn.com.