Short Film Starring My Beloved’s Red Bronco: Poems (Ballard Spahr Prize for Poetry) - Softcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

K. Iver is a nonbinary trans poet from Mississippi. Their poems have appeared in or are forthcoming in Boston Review, Gulf Coast, TriQuarterly, BOAAT, Puerto del Sol, Salt Hill, and elsewhere. They have a PhD in poetry from Florida State University. They are the 2021–2022 Ronald Wallace Fellow for Poetry at the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing.

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Family of Origin Content Warning

Detailed descriptions of a father’s brutality.

Graphic images of a boy, dreaming

about food at night, his stolen

transistor radio spilling James Brown’s

good, good lovin’ over his pillow. This poem

may unfold, in detail, a husband’s violence

toward a wife. May run time in a circle.

May reveal the husband’s plush

red hands abbreviating his wife’s neck

on a crisp November afternoon, their child

watching from the porch. The husband

is my father. Is the dreaming boy. The wife 

is my mother. Sometimes, she forgets. 

Sometimes she thinks she’s ten again, 

watching her bedroom door, afraid

her father will turn the brass knob. 

That was decades ago. He must’ve stopped.

This poem may mention sexual abuse

in the abstract. This poem doesn’t know

why it must tell you. It wants you

to resist brightsiding its tragedies.

It’s tired of hearing that everything

worked out, didn’t it? Tired of hearing

the mother loved the child. So much.

Everyone says so. Everyone who knows 

that, on an April weekend, the mother

left me, the child, in her very first bedroom

whose door opened—while the child slept—

to a grandfather’s outline. Don’t think

this poem wants to stay in that bedroom.

It wants to swaddle the impossible

contours of joy. It’s tired of hearing

joy is possible. It wants joy.

Short Film Starring My Beloved’s Living Body

Open with the two-lane highway. The ice

truck and the ice. Your elbow resting on the 

driver side window. Zoom in on the toned

forearm. The goldenrod rushing by. Missy,

our audience can see you now. Show them

the gas station delivery where a drunk lady

screams about your good looks because

there's no original way to say a man is beau-

tiful, and the lady really did scream. Our au-

dience will believe us and they won't. They'll

say people this lovely are only in films. No

one with lips this pillowy needs to deliver

ice. And here you are, lifting bags and saving

up for a weekend in Memphis at the Motel

6. There's no time for dialogue about class

or gender. No room to signal that your time

with goldenrod is limited. Your time awake

is limited. Look how awake you are. How the

facial bones move with perfect alignment un-

der the dermis. Cut to the motel, leaving its

light on for your red Bronco. Now the motel's

dark interior. Now the bed nearest the win-

dow where you and a just-out-of-high-school

date can finally make contact after years of

parentally-imposed silence. I'm sorry. This

film can't access your interior. Your date is

the only one directing her memory. Your 

date is me. My memory is the shower scene,

already zoomed in on your face. Open your

eyes again. Look directly at me. Hold the

camera's gaze through the falling water as if 

this were our last frame. Missy, this is our

last frame. Body is the only good word for

body. I'm afraid of home's hunger for yours,

but off camera the interstate is waiting and

my lines are let's go.

Who Is This Grief For?

1.

My acupuncturist says

why so hungry these days

knowing I’m alone

too much.

I say my tongue wants

forkfuls of warm, white

cake, then, more forkfuls.

She says what it needs

is another tongue.

Her needle tries to release

a decade-old phone call

stuck in the tight meat

between my index finger

and thumb.

I pretend my body’s 

ready. Picture the old phone

receiver’s words Missy 

and suicide pressuring 

into steam. I pretend 

the needle doesn’t hurt.

She says how does that anger

work for you. I say it works

because it’s mine.