Peter Krumbach

Peter Krumbach lives and writes in Southern California. His new collection “Degrees of Romance,” the winner of the 2022 Antivenom Poetry Award, will be published by Elixir Press in 2023.

HYDROGEN AND HELIUM by Peter Krumbach

I misspell people’s faces. Cup them in my palms, kiss some, give a playful tug on the jowls of others. Good evening. Never better. Burghers of landfills and oak-lined boardrooms, white-collar criminals and donors of kidneys. Calculated together, they equal a mean designed to obscure the edges. I apologize, parties do this to me. The low ceiling track lights, the shag underfoot, the heads bobbing like olives in brine. I could have sworn it was Frank. Dressed as Biff. I bend to greet the elders collapsed in mid-century chairs. Boredom, meet urgency. I bend to your aunt Wilma, who turns…

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