[POETRY]

[02/23/26]

Only Animals

Two Poems by Karla Lamb

Now That the Couch is Cinders

you douse the entire apartment in essential oils—to dissipate the smell of burnt upholstery. You smudge white sage, stifle embers to stub, in an abalone shell. Spores of odor dawdle in the plume like fragrant ashes, misting the art nouveau oak vanity you thrifted last June, before any flames ever gutted your space. Motes of dust still coalesce with your dead skin cells, land dimly on your secondhand chrome hairbrush. Waxing moon in Cancer, you stage a new age cleansing ritual: novice altar of smoked quartz, dried eucalyptus, frankincense. A handful of your lost cat’s fur. You insist that everything’s okay now that the building’s fumigated; that we try your homemade reposado spiked kombucha, your panacea for shaky hands, chronic pain—served neat, in real crystal tumblers. & after your Gatsby-themed housewarming, when one breaks in the steel sink, gashing your palm open, you curse proverbial ennui under your breath. Don't cry, drive yourself to the ER. & in the quivering nerve ending of the day, you vaguely swear you'll sum up all your parts, donate to Goodwill, have Mathew hang the old shelves, get healthy again. Do things for yourself. But when you get back, bandaged & medicated, the arid apartment still smells of seared nylon. So, you lie supine on the cold floor—aerosol a heavy cloud of name-brand vanilla rosewood you’ve hoarded for years from your favorite apothecary. It hugs your skin as it glitters down, illumined by the yellow streetlight through the iron-barred windows. You fall asleep there—on the concrete, with your heart like a vintage China closet—open, glass

Paradox of the Unhinged

Tonight, you want to shoot up the entire city. Say: Humans are the only animals that can kill from a distance. Your gold-leafed skin burns, says yes to your flabby arms. Yes to more narcotics & top shelf liqueurs. Yes, to excess. Because fuck it, she died young. From a birth control related spinal blood clot, New York cocaine, & too much Napa Valley chardonnay. You think time is fucking you, & every ex who said you were too manic, says absolutely yes. You are still their favorite party story, their favorite dodged bullet. & after her burial you get back the books you lent her in Ann Harbor: Didion & Tillinghast. You help her mom clean out her Williamsburg loft. Start a foundation in her name. Roommate found her cold & blue & stiff. & when you finally come home, you say: a good cry can make any man ravenous, & make me promise to dress sexy at your funeral. She was your ex we still fight over, the one you still dream about. You say that you were the only one to speak at her service, you were the only one not tongue tangled, nauseous. A few more Negronis in, you say: I am rock & roll suicidal. I am David Foster Wallace, Hunter S. Gonzo-all-American: Yes die young, yes live fast, yes leave a beautiful body & a finished manuscript. Tonight, you can’t stop pacing our small Pittsburgh apartment. Start auto-writing your own eulogy, just to make sure somebody says something, anything, at your funeral. Prophesize your martyrdom, your late initiation into The 27 Club. Romanticize your obituary in headlines, in neon red lights, high on lit marquees. You light another American Spirit & say: Oblivion can only be extracted from the bottom of a bottle; the slug at the end of this barrel. I can see the heatwaves in your eyes now, the whites of letting go. Leave you passed out cold on our loveseat.

KARLA LAMB (she/ella) is a Queer Xicana poet born in Mexico City, with work appearing in Dyke Affair, So To Speak, Hooligan Mag, Fruitslice, Tilted House, Cobra Milk, Rejected Lit, A Women’s Thing Magazine, Cool Hill Review, Fine Print Press, Word Riot, and elsewhere. Her work has been nominated twice for Best of the Net and translated in Revista La Peste. She hosts Verse4Verse—winner of Sapphic.LA’s Best Open Mic 2024 and 2025—a monthly Sapphic and Queer-expansive poetry night in East Hollywood. More at @vinylowl.