Lost Horizon
Mad Men (2015) Peggy Olson has a pair of snow-white roller skates somebody left behind. Peggy Olson has four vermouths in her, which, these days, isn’t that many. Peggy Olson has burned her finger and splashed coffee on her tights. Peggy Olson has her concerns about where all this is going. Peggy Olson has let the offending floral arrangement decay on her coffee table. Peggy Olson has inherited a woodblock print of an octopus pleasuring a lady. Peggy Olson has recently (constantly) been reminded of what she does not have. Peggy Olson has just one cigarette left in the pack. Peggy Olson has a gleeful, insouciant glide across the abandoned linoleum.
Mother/Ship
for the Millennium Falcon I cry each time we’re reunited, any time a sliver of her battered body comes into view. She must have been smooth, once, before I was born, before I, crumpled and teary, heaved from one darkness into another. My earthly mother apologized again and again. If I’d known it would be like this, lovey, I never would have had you. By it she meant me. By like this she meant imperfect, prone to pain. But the Falcon was disfigured and the most magnificent thing I’d ever seen. She was queenly, mysterious, radiant beneath the dust. She was a place to hide, a way to escape. I crawled shame-faced into her shadow, my broken-open hands and knees smearing dark blood across the tarmac. Beloved, she whispered, giving a cool curve to lean against. Beloved. Warrior. Keep living. I am so proud.
Kate Horowitz is a poet, essayist, and science writer in Washington, DC. Her work on wreckage, family, and film has most recently been published in OCEANS & TIME, Moonchild Magazine, and Bright Wall/Dark Room. She was Yes, Poetry's Poet of the Month in July 2018. She likes dogs and moss and sending postcards and taking long walks at night. She tweets @delight_monger.