YESSICA KLEIN - POEMS

Yessica Klein is a German-Brazilian writer living in Berlin, Germany. She holds an MA in Creative Writing from Kingston University (London, UK) and was shortlisted for the 2017 Jane Martin Poetry Prize (Cambridge University, UK). She is currently working on her podcast, @thatpoetrything.

​I Am Always Hungry & Wanting To Have Sex
After Eileen Myles and Anne Carson
 

​scooped smooth peanut
 
butter longing for
 
the surface that dresses
 
the newly found
 
world of you
 
classified quietness
 
kindred galaxies
 
gradually collapsing into
 
each other - does it matter
 
to us that there were
 
other people to love?
 
it took two to tango
 
& we can't even dance
 
 

I Am Part Of The Universe & The Universe Is Part Of Me
​

​though we watched a shooting
 
star together, that was not
 
our favourite moment. yours was
 
a hand job whilst stranded in a cave
 
in Port Bou, the high tide and the storm
 
keeping us attached. mine was something
 
so ephemerally precious that I
 
can no longer recall, the hours in which
 
we did not kiss, the seconds before you
 
arrived home, a song of tingling keys
 
by the building door. former lovers:
 
we are not our own feelings
 
let alone another being’s mess.
 
outside our old kitchen window,
 
the night buzzes with no promises
 
but silence. 

How Do We Sleep At Night
​

​ 
Lover, how do we sleep at night? The rise of right-wing politics with
comb-overs & bad tan, religious extremists who bomb cities in
name of their imaginary friends. Oh god, yes, another glass of
 
wine, please. Why not? Soon we will be drowning in plastic,
especially coffee capsules by Corporations™,  by 2050 our
oceans will have more of it than fish. Yes, in volume. No, I’m not
 
sure whales do count. I was in Brazil when the Amazon
was on fire, looked outside thinking a storm was coming,
wondered what the fuck was burning.  Some toast? The whole planet,
 
you’re right. I don’t know how people have kids these days. When
everything is glowing red. Hottest summer in Europe since forever,
right? & the Atlantic here is still fucking cold. This brand did a
 
silk scarf with all the extinct insects in the last 5 years. I read
today they are giving rhinos 2-3 years as well. It wouldn’t surprise
me if tomorrow the locust cloud came with their hunger. We
 
failed this, didn’t we? Not even domesticated animals will last after
us - we failed our innocent pets as well. There might be a meteor
coming, but we won’t know until it’s too close.  Aliens? They
 
scare me the most, a threat more unstoppable than climate change.
If the zombie apocalypse comes, I want to be on the half-dead side
& save myself from all the fucking stress & adrenaline rush.
 
Lover, how do we sleep at night? The nape of your neck, I follow
its curvature to your shoulders. I’d trace your freckles to the
end of the world. 

I’m About To Show Him A Little Bit More Of Myself
​

​Thin calves in men: trace muscles with lace fingers,
the softest Nivea skin. Longer Sunday mornings in bed, please.  Cook 
breakfast with last night’s cat-eye blissfully smudged, wearing a checked robe.
 
Isn’t chaos such a wonderful surprise party? Death Cab as the soundtrack of 
two teenagers who had forgotten what amazing feels in these liquid capitalist days.
Sink into this possibility with a blob: feelings are the opposite of volatile.
 
Should we tell each other secrets & should we believe in what we’re 
saying in the first place -- the world outside my head never feels real enough. 
Love is that stupid smile on your face, stupid.
 
Love plays hide & seek between sheets: an uncertainty so sweet & sticky.
It lathers easily & pops delicately against the Berlin blues as we get distracted 
-- call it divine timing, call it the earlier spring ever recorded in Europe.
 
My room is like the inside of my mind, flowers included. When you arrive, 
the doorbell explodes my heart into bloody bits of heart-shaped paper.
Give me solutions for that side-smile of yours.
 
I am sitting on your kitchen window smoking my 5th cigarette, trying to burn 
your arm hairs with my Clipper.  When the alarm breaks the spell, you say no 
& hug me tighter. I chew on paranoias craving a candied sugar-rush.
 
I am still both a cynic & a hopeless romantic.
 

I Can Resist Everything Except Temptation
​

​if I were a Catholic, I would bring guilt
to the opening line of a poem. instead:
we exhale good-byes into the 3am fog
& watch the crystals of unspoken not-
so-secrets pop on phone screens. if I
were a Catholic, I might bring wine
into this calculated occasion. instead
I take note of the dimple, the eyebrow scar;
a mind that finds its way to a kiss every 13s,
every mid-sentence. if I were a Catholic,
I would surely intrude because of second
nature. I would talk too much about the
miracles of chance meetings, consider
premeditation - & still the dialectics
of good & evil prevail, the existentialism
of just one more drink on Thursdays. if I
were a Catholic, I couldn’t believe in
this type of conversational magic &
would never mention the pretentiousness
of words like connection and /
or chemistry. life is a lot easier when you
have a god that tells you to shut up &
look the other way.  someone else who as
sure as hell is not leading us into temptation -
I consider leaping into the uncertainty
but it might as well just be a selfish whim.
if I were a Catholic, I would find these
words & pray: I am at a crossroads,
I am doubting my faith.