Dolly Lemke
I'm so into you
Hannah Gamble
When you dropped the middle name
from you publishing moniker
I could look beyond the time
you claimed girls don't like you
because of your tallness.
I could finally appreciate
our shared affinity for menswear
and I could really mean it when I said
You look good in that red hoodie.
The one passed down
from that criminal romance.
I know a wife can also grow a bear
and that living with the pervasiveness
of loneliness can never be
explained.
Cities
I wish he loved me
in a way that understood how flying
is a terrible metaphor for freedom
I wish he loved me
in a way that understood why
there needs to be more affordable houses
by the lake
Why people are not quiet enough
in public spaces
Why there isn't enough patience
to go around
Why we don’t need another city
How we’re drowning
in the excitement of cities
I wish he was in love with the idea
of one acre of vacant land enough
to have made it an option with me
How could he not know
I would leave
About Dolly Lemke
Dolly Lemke was born and raised in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She currently lives and works in Chicago where she received an MFA in Poetry from Columbia College Chicago. She is the author of two chapbooks, O Town Heights (DoubleCross Press, 2012) and I’m so into you (plumberries press, 2013). She is founder and co-curator of The Dollhouse Reading Series and also co-founded the online poetry journal PINWHEEL where she serves as an Editor-at-Large.