Two Poems by Katie Hibner

Coming of Age
You’re a lilywhite egg forked out of picture books,
shrouded in pipe cleaners and masking tape.

You bob in the foam of the rabid altar,
both fear and lust over the crayon sharpener built into the back.

I used Raw Sienna to outline Mother Goose’s corpse on your tongue.
You try to thrust it into the mainframe, tell me you belong nude in the roaster—

I remember how, despite your full-body rash,
you were always trying to work out hip bones on the Etch-A-Sketch.

I push you away; I’m just a mother-head—
a Capitoline Wolf warming the weird eggs
hunched on her ejecta blanket.

You Decide to Meet My Muse
To see if the rumors are true.

Yes, she really calls herself Madame Ampersand,

invites you to brunch in her sepulcher

with raccoons on the doorjambs.

She recalls performing her own lobotomy

with a ballpoint pen—

the story boils your hormones,

makes them squirt out your pores like fondant.

A black licorice flag waves out her eye-hole—

a memento from bedding a Jolly Roger.

She prophesizes that all my dreams will come true:

I will be bred into iron.

I will be doled out to the willowy congregation

like deer meat.

She makes you promise to take a lap around the playground,

distracting you as she censors

the new memories blooming on your eyelids.

About the Poet
Katie Hibner is a confetti canon from Cincinnati, Ohio. Her poetry has been published or is forthcoming in Bone Bouquet, glitterMOB, Powder Keg, Smoking Glue Gun, and Word for/Word. Katie reads for Sixth Finch and dedicates all of her poetry to her mother, Laurie.