The Paper God: poems by Kat Black. Number 4 in Volume Four of our limited-edition Summer Kitchen Chapbook Series, now available at summer’s end.

Cover image: antique quilting fabric, Pennsylvania. Series design by Ron Mohring.

Published: September 21, 2016 [49 copies]
23 pages
$9.00

Kat Black is a recent graduate from Smith College in Northampton, MA with a BA in English and Spanish and currently teaches English to school children in Shanghai, China. 

Dreams of My Father 

Hey there little frat boy, little innocent
little lockjaw, hey, little unshod soul.
*
You are an Arabic letter rusting in my stomach
and you do not speak true.
*
You are the face of Saint Nectarios in the kitchen
logging my days, my farts, the flecks of ash
you deploy between your ramekins of incense
and the red-eyed candles.
*
Father-saint, will your corpse, too, sweat perfume
the way your breath sweats coffee and furtive hand jobs
and the secrets that spoon and fuck in the hot, curved terraria
of your uncut nails?
*
You are sand at the base of my bathing suit, grit and bits of gauze
questing for an open wound.
*
You are the rosary over which my fingers run
unsated, each bead a threaded scarab
too holy to crush.
I pray for a day without the detritus
of your worship–tissues, chips, clippings
of Victoria’s Secret catalogues crackling underfoot.
No secrets fissioning in the soapdish
no ghost scrawling her Alhambran complaints
in the mirror after your bath.
*
You are only the threat of the numinous.
If I set the sticky traps, watched the white bulb of your belly
storm through your fur as it fell away in swatches,
I would pour cooking oil
on your limbs and my own heart
sutured for the past eight years with live worms.

_______ _______ _______ _______ _______ _______ _______

• Purchase your copy here: only 24 copies are available from the press!