Generations
One more election and my first
baby can vote. The other day
we saw two men walking
along the side of a road
with a gas can. She asked
What do you think are they doing?
And I said, starting a fire
or, perhaps, they are just helping
one another get home.
There really isn’t much distance
between fear and hope.
The scale of which
I cannot overstate.
Finally
Suddenly I want to buy flowers,
not cut for the vase, but root-balled
and leggy, bare and ready for growing.
Double knock-outs and Frida Kahlos,
tea babies and Juliets. No one
can end a rhododendron, no one
ignores a punchy arm of hyacinth.
I want the garden brimming, yes,
but really I want time.
Long stems of it and shoots rising full
of bloom, thickly mulched and ready
to work. I want the gnarly tangle
on my knees and dirt-covered,
the part before the end, the nurture
and sunlight, the burst and wild.
The part that is flourishing and change.
For this, I want to be in the weeds.
Katy Luxem lives in Salt Lake City. She is a graduate of the University of Washington and has a master’s degree from the University of Utah. Her work is anthologized in Love Is For All Of Us (Hachette, 2025) and has appeared in Rattle, McSweeney’s, SWWIM Every Day, One Art, Poetry Online, and many others. She is the author of Until It Is True (Kelsay Books, 2023).
January House Literary Journal 
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