Insomnia

The dog keeps digging in the sheets,
the same spot over and over.
Whatever he fears never happens.  
A book says I should hold my breath to feel tired
then count the release. 
Not breathing when I cum 
makes me feel like anything could happen.
Before bed, I avoid a series about violent people.  
Or the one about tiny houses —
I like heavy curtains too much.
We watched a film with unruly nobles
running in and out of each other’s rooms. 
I wish I could wake my husband for sex
instead of scrolling on my phone,
Americans arguing online
if poetry helps or hurts. 
The green laser in the neighbor’s palm tree
scribbles on our ceiling.

ξ

Essentials

Allowed inside one at a time, 
relieved the grocery store bakery case 
contains cakes.
Decadence still has its world.
You ring the buzzer
for the princess cake, 
its dome of green marzipan 
and pink rosette posed 
like a debutante 
about to descend stairs.
It doesn’t matter that 
neither of you really like it.
You don’t even like the hipster version 
served in your hometown
in a mason jar. 
You celebrate then take a bath, 
another invention of the past.

ξ

Christian Gullette is a 2019 National Poetry Series finalist, and his poems have appeared or are forthcoming in the Kenyon Review, New England Review, Pleiades, Smartish Pace, Cherry Tree, Western Humanities Review, Meridian, and other journals. He serves as the editor-in-chief of The Cortland Review. He is currently a Lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley.