The Gentle & the Strange

Katey Funderburgh

At noon the neighborhood men
drip over porch railings and smoke
Marlboros. I am carried by the smell
of fire. Or of men.
I admire their tomato plants.
They compliment my alien t-shirt
and I smile. I lean on their gate.
Their faces glisten and open.

They must know I’m good
at keeping secrets. Can they sense
that I’m the once-abducted? I’m wanted.
They story their UFO encounters.
You’re special, they suck in,
you believe in 3rd eyes and mysticism.
You believe, breathe out, in the world
like we do. Of course.

My calves burn in the sun.
They ask my name. They do
not ask me inside. They offer tomatoes.
I am not laid bare.
I want to kneel. To lick
their sidewalk clean. To swallow their
cigarettes whole, ember myself on their lawn.
There is too much mercy.
One man lifts his hand up,
fingers a yellowing leaf, says Once you begin
to see beauty here, it’s everywhere.

Hailing from Colorado, Katey Funderburgh is a current MFA Poetry student at George Mason University. There, she is also a Poetry Alive! Fellow, and she serves as a reader for both phoebe and So To Speak literary journals. Katey's work is primarily concerned with nature, the body, and memory. Some of her previous poems appear in samfiftyfour and Jet Fuel Review, among others. When she isn't writing, Katey is baking or laying in the sun with her cat, Thistle.