After the earth becomes a brutalist’s wet concrete dream 
and every fragmentary farm town I ever loved is razed, 
Monet’s Haystacks will still hang on the eggshell 
walls of a museum where my wife and I take our children

Future Pastoral/Curatorial

There’s something animal-cruel inside of me 
that manifests on rainy days. It pours 
and a rabbit chews off her own foot, 
says, "Good luck with that," around a mouthful 
of gristle.


I'm Sorry, but I Absolutely Hate This (For Penny)

By peering through a telescope with the dust cap still screwed on.
But instead of a blank void, there is a tiny Botticelli
sketched against the dark, iridescent as a clamshell in seaspray,
as a dewdrop on a petal on a wet, black oil slick.

Maybe I Am Just Writing a Poem About Beauty—

Euphoria that cuts you at the knees,       
sends you kneeling to the sun hot sand, presses your tongue
and teeth to the grit of it, scrapes saccharine intricacies        
into your enamel.  Until you turn to static, an infinite loop
of white ooze


Katrina Smolinsky

Selected work