K.T. Billey
Self-Portrait as Sulphur
As in, that which occurs often,
narrowed by revelry
Calm never comes that comes
but even if I were the wine
that’s relatively clean heat
Powder for each cheek
papier mâché
The tonic for internal
Call me hot stuff.
Spin spidersilk hoods
Sublimate anything
and the name
Call me brimstone.
Sing my lungs and bathe
the lashes that spell
narrowed by revelry
Calm never comes that comes
but even if I were the wine
that’s relatively clean heat
Powder for each cheek
papier mâché
The tonic for internal
Call me hot stuff.
Spin spidersilk hoods
Sublimate anything
and the name
Call me brimstone.
Sing my lungs and bathe
the lashes that spell
in seams
and war.
to all
of wrath, rising steady
as steam along the highway
for every house.
of hallowed ground
and scraped-up girl.
complaining is a burn
purgative by nature.
so you see
not light but edible
darkness—the ship above
the last white whale.
into manageable form
flowers. Is flower.
the letters
the brightest salt.
and war.
to all
of wrath, rising steady
as steam along the highway
for every house.
of hallowed ground
and scraped-up girl.
complaining is a burn
purgative by nature.
so you see
not light but edible
darkness—the ship above
the last white whale.
into manageable form
flowers. Is flower.
the letters
the brightest salt.
K.T. Billey left rural Alberta (the Texas of Canada) for an MFA in Poetry at Columbia University, where she is now a Teaching Fellow. Poems and translations are upcoming or have recently appeared in Phantom Limb, The New Orleans Review, Prick of the Spindle, H.O.W. Journal, Palabras Errantes, and Other Voices magazine. She co-curates the Lamprophonic Emerging Writers Series and is proud to be a Girls Write Now mentor.