We wondered why everyone felt so 

young. Why the desert went on forever, homeless and grieving. 


When My Best Friend’s First Love Slips Into A Coma, We Sit On Opposite Sides of the Bed Quietly

The sapling will grow tall, as saplings do in good soil.

The body will forget the taste of fruit, as bodies do under trees.

The Body: The Sapling

Jesus, please don’t cry. What you saw was

Holiness, really. Her making me naked

In the car. The steam that rolled down the window

Was holiness.

Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit

My poems have the consistency 
of a dead deer’s innards, red and throbbing, 

leaking out its last liquid. But look—
the flies are rejoicing! They can eat 

for three more days.

The Crush

A few seats away, a woman 
is making a necklace out of
her teeth. With her fingers, 
she exits them from her gums
like passengers, slips her sewing
needle into an incision through
the white shine of tooth, touched 
by decay. 

katie grierson

Selected work