Online Exclusive: “Substratum” by Kate Sweeney

Kate Sweeney

Substratum

I keep my fingernails short so that when I touch myself
I will never tear through my interiority. Each time I leave
the house I remind my husband to touch the children

often to fold them gently into him. Put his hands over
their hands, notice the security of diminishing pulse
on their unbothered skin while they sleep. As a child

people only remembered to touch me when I was sad,
this helped me understand the way power contaminates
the integrity of sadness. When my hands are at rest

I curl them into fists, thumb hooked inside first finger.
If I punched someone like this I wonder if I would break
the knuckle on first contact. No one noticed until my son,

pulling back each digit one by one, asks
if my heart is abnormally small for my body.

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Kate Sweeney is a poet. She holds an MFA from Bennington College and serves as Managing Editor for Pleiades Magazine. She is the recipient of the 2024 Adrienne Rich Award from Beloit Poetry Journal, the Palette Poetry Ekphrastic Prize, and has been a finalist for Best of the Net and nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her poems and interviews have appeared or are forthcoming from Poet Lore, Michigan Quarterly Review, Poetry Northwest & elsewhere. She is author of the chapbook, The Oranges Will Still Grow Without Us (Ethel 2021)