KIM ELLINGSON

Holiday Party 2017

This poem is about the habits and people we tether ourselves to when we are listlessly searching for an anchor in life.

You might have been standing on the beach
in Silver Lake with your soon-to-be-ex-lover
while I numbed myself in the ancient
basement of the bar where I worked

on Old World Third Street—doing lines,
downing a bottle of red wine with an elephant
on the label, dipping my licked finger into a baggie
of crystalline molly as alcoholic rats chewed taps

of Spotted Cow. As you considered a move
to the Pacific Coast, a last-ditch effort
for you two, I lived in an East Side January,
considering only my own mouth,

how my teeth chattered themselves back to life
during an endless comedown from key bumps
in the bathroom, cab rides in pre-dawn blackness,
biting walks in lake effect wind.

Kim Ellingson holds an MFA from Antioch University, and her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Cagibi, Rejected Lit, Lost Balloon, and elsewhere. She lives in Milwaukee and can be found on Instagram @its_a_lemon_tree.

MORE FROM SUMMER 2022 (4:1)

PROSE

2021 Prose Chapbook Winner
Resistance, Sue Mell (an excerpt)
A Conversation with Sue Mell and Sara Siddiqui Chansarkar, Prose Chapbook Winner and Finalist, Maria S. Picone, Managing Editor

Cataloging Ghosts, Carlos Contreras
Dalí, Renée Jessica Tan
How To Use Your Father’s Lawn Mower, Yasmin Nadiyah Phillip
Our Trespassing, Joel Worford
The Puddling, Mattea Heller

POETRY

Il Lupo Mannaro, Stephanie Staab
When it happens, you let it happen, Lynne Schmidt
Holiday Party 2017, Kim Ellingson
Ninety Days, Remi Recchia
The Universe, as in One Last Song for the Lonely Hearts, Michelle Hulan
Saudade Accuses Brown Girl, Yvanna Vien Tica
windmills over Zaandam, Gabriela Gonzales
Fold the Shadows, Cate McGowan
Intercession, Sasha Wade

ART

Fluidity, Patrick van Raalten
Yellow Purse, William C. Crawford
Blankness Was the Beauty, Carolyn Guinzio
Telephone, Moses Ojo
Skin Over Milk Cover Art, Oormila Vijayakrishnan Prahlad
Egress, Phil Temples