Gender study; gestalt
A woman is driving 100 miles per hour toward a brick wall. She’s slamming on the brakes, but they don’t work. Her boyfriend, in the passenger’s seat, chews gum and scrolls Instagram. In the passenger’s seat, he pumps one fist and shouts along to yacht rock. The woman is a volunteer at Habitat for Humanity. Her boyfriend is a budding ornithologist. He flips the bird everywhere he goes haha get it? The wall is a breaking point, rapidly approaching. The car is a 2002 Honda Civic with a mismatched door panel and a bumper bra. The woman is afraid for her life. The wall is afraid, too. The woman punches her boyfriend in the thigh and says do something you idiot. The boyfriend shrugs a little with both hands like, what?! All around, clouds vomit onto the littered berm. The wall holds its bricks a little tighter. The woman pulls the emergency break. The glove box explodes and a Jack-in-the-box pops out, waving limp arms. Dammit says the woman. What the fuck says the boyfriend. Vote your conscience! says the Jack-in-the-box. Fphffbbffbff says the avalanche of fast food napkins billowing out behind him. The car is un-brakable. Above it, the sky is a sick wheel of light. Under whirring tires, asphalt cackles. Don’t look says the wall to its quivering mortar. Don’t look says the spinning light. Oh god says the bumper bra. Rosanna, yeah! says the boyfriend, punching the ceiling, punching through the moonroof. Love me says the woman, but she is talking to the wall. Love me says the wall, turning to mist. Aauuugghhh says the boyfriend, as the light-wheel takes his hand at the wrist.
KT says, If this were a real band, I’d show up with my voice and maybe a loop pedal…but since it’s a DREAM BAND, I think I have to go with the theremin. I’ve always found it incredible that an instrument so embodied must also be played without touch.
In our dream band, on: theremin
KT Herr (they/she) is a queer writer, stepparent, and curious person with recent work appearing or forthcoming in Foglifter, Grist, The Massachusetts Review, Bat City Review, and as part of the forthcoming project On The National Language with B.A. Van Sise. KT’s poems have been selected to win the American Literary Review Award in Poetry and the Sweet Lit Poetry Contest, among others. KT is a Four Way Books board member and an Inprint C. Glenn Cambor Fellow in Critical Poetics at the University of Houston. You can find more of their work at ktherr.com.
Ran Off With the Star Bassoon 