Stephen Kampa
Later I Had to Ask What Kind of Nuts
That year, we gathered in spite
of the pandemic
(and one cousin’s positive
test) to celebrate Christmas
the way we used to—
potlucks sequenced for a week’s
worth of visits, nightly games
of nickel-a-point
cribbage, every broadcast match
blaring somewhere to keep track
of the fantasy
league fallout. Always someone
held a whisky sour, red wine,
neat rye, or steaming
bowlful of Little Smokies.
My grandmother was ninety
that year and ready
to meet Jesus, she said it
all the time. We kept parsing
possibilities,
performing some personal
calculus none of us knew
how properly to
conclude while we all headed
to something more endemic
with its built-in end,
as everything has its end.
There was no better emblem
than what one aunt brought
in snowflake-blazed cellophane,
homemade snacks as gifts: pecans
and cashews seasoned
with cinnamon and cayenne
pepper. We demolished them.
No one could stop us.
Our mouths burned with such sweetness.
The Thermometer
The officer puts the thermometer
next to my temporal artery
and swipes it across my forehead
like a dutiful grocery store cashier
scanning a difficult barcode.
It’s a standard temperature check
to access the downtown area.
Though I don’t hear the three beeps
for a dangerous reading, he says,
“I’ll need you step to the side.”
I’ll need you to step to the side
is the scariest thing you can hear:
you might be symptomatic.
The officer nods to another
who takes me back to a trailer
lit with fluorescent lights
and draped with the papery sheets
you sit on in doctors’ offices,
but in the corner of the ceiling
a camera with a steady green
light squats, suspended like a spider,
pointing at where I’m sitting.
The new officer waits for the knock
but doesn’t open the door
because the knocker opens it,
bureaucratting into the room,
a fastidious functional gray fog
with a visible pocket watch chain—
a relic from some more decorous era—
and a touchscreen pad in his hand.
He says, “We’re comparing your data
to data from those in your orbit
over the past forty-eight hours.
Hopefully, no one else registered
a temperature as high as yours.
Meanwhile, I have some questions.”
He scrolls through the touchscreen pad,
looking for something to do with me.
“I’m noticing more than a little
activity that has us concerned,”
he recites, never identifying
the us, “and I want to ask you
about it. Over the past few months,
you seem to have shopped for a number
of books that are notably critical
of the President. The data indicate
you paused on the summary pages
for a substantial period of time,
and on some of them went so far
as to read all the available previews.
What can you tell me about that?”
Despite not knowing his name,
I’ve read on a number of chat boards—
“We’ve also recorded a number
of chat board pages you’ve perused
quite thoroughly,” he adds,
“all of them wormy with errors
about government operations
and insinuations about the President
considered by most to be treasonous.”
He is scrolling more quickly now.
“I note that our eye-tracking software,
by which you agreed to be monitored
when you agreed to and accepted
our unlimited terms and conditions,
shows your eye movements slow
and linger most frequently on
parodic Presidential depictions,
the likes of which have been banned
since Year Three of the Outbreak.”
And having read precisely those
chat boards, I know how this ends,
yet what I’m thinking of now is
the way those thermometers work:
with dozens of infrared sensors,
they capture thousands of readings
in a single swipe of your brow,
calibrating and recalibrating
the numbers so they can determine
whether you’re burning up.
After Finishing / This Poem, I Remember / a Better Poet’s // Cardinal Poem, / and I Think, Oh, What the Hell, / It’s Already Done
He lands like a drop
of bright red paint a painter
lets fall from the brush
by accident on
a branch outside my window.
It’s cold, so he puffs
his body feathers,
and because it’s still raining,
he snap-shakes his tail
like someone writing
too long whose hand has begun
to tighten with cramps.
I think of you when
the female lands on a branch
nearby. Oh, heavy,
sweet symbolism!
O, picturesque cardinal
pair playing tag in
such gray! They must be
so happy. When the female
flits like a flicked crumb
off to another
branch or tree or yard, I know
I’ve had quite enough
of symbolism,
although the male cardinal
stays just a little
longer to explain
how it feels to be alone
and red in the rain.
Stephen Kampa is the author of four collections of poetry: Cracks in the Invisible (2011), Bachelor Pad (2014), Articulate as Rain (2018), and World Too Loud to Hear (2023). His work has appeared in the Yale Review, Cincinnati Review, Southwest Review, Hopkins Review, Poetry Northwest, Subtropics, and Smartish Pace. He was also included in Best American Poetry 2018 and Together in a Sudden Strangeness: America's Poets Respond to the Pandemic (2020). During the spring of 2021, he was the writer in residence at the Amy Clampitt House. He teaches at Flagler College and is currently the poetry editor of Able Muse.
