To all those who are
tired & beautiful:
please step inside
my bungalow.
See this river?
It is too cold
to drink but just cold
enough to be a dare.
It takes
a great swimmer
to get back
from the bottom.
I know the exact temperature
of when I was born.
Imagine the dismay
when I say that.
I live to sentimentalize
the world. I don’t care.
A protective position,
a lovely disease. People
are the tiny things.
They end in worms.
Nathan Kemp lives in Denver, Colorado. His forthcoming chapbook, Gnomic Verse, won the 2014 Dream Horse Press Poetry Chapbook Prize. His work appears in Columbia Poetry Review, Paper Darts, Cream City Review, and H_NGM_N, among others. He is a contributing poetry editor for Whiskey Island Magazine and Barn Owl Review.