by Erik Kennedy

I stored my plan for world peace
safely in my coat pocket,
and then I washed the coat.

The days when I was writing the plan
were dark, the nights frosty
and full of agues.

I don’t know what will befall me
as I rewrite the plan from memory.
I even forget

to eat lunch sometimes when I’m distracted,
so who knows how I’m going to remember
what mechanisms I came up with

for the end times, for stopping
hungry children feasting on zoo animals
and dentists pulling the gold teeth of widows.

Erik Kennedy is the author of the poetry collections Sick Power Trip (2025),  Another Beautiful Day Indoors (2022), and There’s No Place Like the Internet in Springtime (2018), all with Te Herenga Waka University Press. His poems, stories, and criticism have been published in places like berlin lit, FENCE, The Florida Review, Los Angeles Review of Books, Poetry, Poetry Ireland Review, Threepenny Review, and the TLS. Originally from New Jersey, he lives in Ōtautahi Christchurch in Aotearoa New Zealand. His Bluesky name is erikkennedy.com.