Joshua Zeitler
Summer 2025 | Poetry
Window Shopping for Heartbreak at the Kamala Harris Rally
Two days before the election, I’m trying to imagine a future
happiness. Separate bedrooms, shared library. I’m looking
at the men arrayed in line, like choosing, at a fine restaurant,
a lobster to be boiled. I’m not after perfection, just someone
to cook pasta in a kitchen with insufficient counter space
as I gain contented weight. While he sleeps, I’ll write love poems
half-heartedly. I’ll tear them from the notebook, leave them
at his seat at the dining room table. I adore that line, he’ll praise me,
‘your winding trapdoor hatch’, and I’ll smile, knowing
he can’t read my handwriting, wouldn’t recognize a good line
if he snorted it off a golden toilet tank. When I’m upset,
he’ll always say, What’s the matter, babe? which I’ll love
to hate him for. We’ll sharpen our knives every other month
all four years that we’re together, though we’ll never talk
about marriage. Once full, hands folded on bloated gut, I’ll call him
what the Aztecs called Cortés, and he’ll strut with God-puffed chest.
Joshua Zeitler is a queer, nonbinary writer based in rural Michigan. They received their MFA from Alma College, and their work has appeared or is forthcoming in Ploughshares, Foglifter, The Account, Pithead Chapel, and elsewhere. They are the author of the chapbook Bliss Road (Seven Kitchens Press, 2025).