You Find Yourself in Kansas City
among house-proud women
and men who are mean with money
to rent an apartment, the first
900 sq. ft. you’ve ever had all to yourself.
You don’t mind that it is across from your mother’s
where she can keep you close
and at arm’s length all at once because
the space is cute – because there is a porch
for your plants – and then you find
the HVAC for #8 is unpredictable,
or rather just doesn’t work even after the maintenance
man bangs on it with the kind of wrench plumbers use
in a show to convince you he’s making repairs
so that all three rooms stretching from west to east
and the tiny bathroom, too, remain forever
inclement. Below, a neighbor whose dog
barks, whose stereo blares, who is surly. Soon
you will discover the mice and will buy
crappy wood and wire traps at the hardware store
which you will toss away along with the pinched bodies
of bulging-eyed rodents into the trash receptacle
nearly every day despite the fact that the cat
in #10 visits frequently to hunt, brings you mice before there is sun
to play with atop the covers, a strange kind of breakfast in bed.
Lisa M. Hase-Jackson’s debut collection of poetry, Flint and Fire, was selected by Jericho Brown for the 2019 Hilary Tham Capital Collection Series, an imprint of The Word Works in Washington DC. She holds an MFA in poetry from Converse College in Spartanburg, South Carolina, and a MA in English from Kansas State University in Manhattan Kansas. A full-time writer and adjunct instructor at the College of Charleston, Lisa is Editor-in-Chief of South 85 Journal and founding editor of Zingara Poetry Review.