CONTEST HONORABLE MENTION “do no harm (elegy for my father’s insurance)”

By autumn koors foltz

i. how the fuck did march
blow through the fall
of all those markets &
still come out swing-
ing & no this is not
about a fucking price

of stocks but um yeah i
guess i have robinhood
on my phone and sunday
is when i hate god-sex
like july in dead waters,
prices “sky rocket” ok

so what exactly is a rock
-et in the ground i loathe
the sound of wet sidewalk
or putting hot pans in
the wet sink i hate fingers
padding past the spine

metal zipper of my shorts
& god i hate the wet lush
precipice of my ex-girlfriend
saying some stupid shit like
hey shawty i hope u know
strap-ons are 20 on amazon

& i said some stupid shit
like oh my god really ok!
but amazon is kinda not
anything but a dead dog
dying. say it with ur whole
dumb mouth, dental abscesses

puss-dotting my gums wonder
how much it blood-costs without
insurance so i guess i will need
to get a great career at 26
so my inevitable adult braces
won’t cost more than a few

amazon strap-ons (purple, oiled
eels fluttering dead from water)
or the luxury of clean wet
gums that grip my dirty wet
egg yolk teeth stained by who
knows what? coffee, berries.

my great career at 26 will
come with a coffee-maker
in the break-room. my teeth
will not crack. my teeth will
come out in photographs, i
will play games by hiding

be seen. my pulp empathetic, enamel bare. (of which there is to recognize my mother,)

ii. when i learned sight came out-
lined, i thought it was a thing
of art n movies, but my driving
license taught me i needed glasses
& glasses taught me i need better
glasses, so really what’s the deal

with worsening cycles of health?
lol which is really just saying i hate
seasons sometimes, april excogitates
into snow-whispered winter or even
the swelter-soft summer wind-up
spring is just admitting u have lost

ur grip on change. i know i have.
so yes this is all hinging on how
i need dental insurance to match
my vision insurance because med
insurance is the state & the others
are catholic churches crumbling

at the stained glass edges. i knew
one, once — saint charles, nearly
collapsed during some earthquake
it was unprepared for. i want every
supplemental plan for danger &
for knowledge of myself. i want

to collect my money on a cliff-side
& say some dumb shit to a debt-
collector in a monologue that starts
with take it! it’ll do me no use any-
more! & shove that shit off the cliff
with a swing of my 20 dollar amazon

strap-on. i shouldn’t make a weapon
out of pleasure. although any object
is just a season changing. i sit on
the sidelines, declare my name, autumn,
which was given to me & myself,
which is when leaves tremble & die

off the branches. decaying teeth. (november knows no expenditures,)

iii. asks everything of me. i pray suddenly,
to afford something obscured distantly
& become disgusted with prayer &
with distant costs accruing & comparing
apr rates. lol u are such a capricorn moon
the debt collector tells me, so i kiss her

& am washed in her forgiveness, i see
my ex-girlfriend’s face morphing into
wondering why i was in the e.r. last march.
the month that knows nothing but falling
back into old outlined habitations, a moon cycle,
or some dumb shit like eels returning to home,

which is called the sargasso sea, which i can not
prove to exist because i have never bought tickets
to see the water. jesus walked barefoot across it,
i think, & all the eels shuddered & died right
where they were born. none of them had life
insurance, so i wonder who collected their corpses.