Keetje Kuipers

Keetje Kuipers (?-present) was born in Pullman, Washington and received a BA from Swarthmore College and an MFA from the University of Oregon. She has written three collections of poetry– Beautiful in the Mouth, The Keys to the Jail, and All Its Charms. She was a Wallace Stegner fellow at Stanford University, a Margery Davis Boyden Wilderness Writing Resident and an Emerging Writer Lecturer at Gettysburg College. She has taught at various universities, most recently Auburn University, and she currently teaches at Hugo House in Seattle and serves as Senior Editor at Poetry Northwest. Source

Told You So

When my daughter spills her orange juice, I wipe it off the linoleum

with the old plaid boxers of the man I thought I’d marry.

Elastic ripped out, seams unraveling—I’ve had lives

already. At night they crawl across

my skin before I can turn on the light.

We spend all these years wanting, and then one day—sudden

as a lamp set to a timer—we have.

There were the nights I drank just so I could feel a little

more of my own unhappiness. Now, with my feet pressed

into this rug, I’ll never be that drunk again.

Before I went to the clinic to get pregnant, I cried onto the shoulder

of an old flame, worried that whoever I loved next would never know

my body when it was beautiful.

How could I have been wrong about so many things?

Published:

2019

Length:

Shorty

Literary Movements:

Contemporary

Anthology Years:

2020

Themes:

Body & Body Image

Family

Love & Relationships