Hilary King
Shopping
My husband and I go shopping for a sofa. My husband brings a book to the store. I bring knitting, laundry, a stack of New Yorkers, and a copy of Moby Dick. We want something firm but giving. The back is important. I like this one, my husband says of a low brown sofa. He read Moby Dick in high school. He puts his feet up on the glass coffee table in front of him and opens his book. I get up to check something in the kitchen but there is no kitchen, just more sofas and more husbands, sitting on them, reading, the wives wandering into the kitchen to check on something, the stack of New Yorkers growing ever taller, the knitting unraveling, the whale in Melville’s ocean still swimming. What was it I needed to check on in the kitchen? I find a green velvet chaise lounge, which is like a couch with one third of a back. I lounge on it. Did they ever find the whale? I know I can learn this without reading, the way we could buy a sofa online, the way we could divorce, my husband and I, sit apart, or recline with other people. I covet the chaise lounge but it doesn’t fit where I live, and besides, the sofa is on sale.
Crawlspace
I had the wildest dream last night.
The microwave was broken,
so I climbed inside it, sat
in a circle and reheated the soup.
Then I lay on the roof and let rain
collect in my elbows. I put my hand
to the crack in the foundation
that’s always been there, winking
at me. This is the dream I thought
I wanted, to be the one to hold up
the walls. I’m not strong enough
to keep every brick in place.
My face won’t hang straight in its frame.
I wring out my needs, but my hands swell,
like clouds, like rage.
I lift the whole rotten house and toss it.
I am a tornado, spitting, spinning,
dreaming my own silver dreams.
Originally from the Blue Ridge mountains of Virginia, Hilary King is a poet now living in the San Francisco Bay Area of California. Her poems have appeared in Ploughshares, TAB, Salamander, Belletrist, Fourth River, and other publications. Her book Stitched on Me was published by Riot in Your Throat Press in 2024. She loves hiking, travel, and ribbon.
