Coraline James Seksinsky

The State Is Not My Lover

2025

if it dies I will not shed a tear.

I don’t really know her or what she

wants from me,

the men who made her, or how I’m

supposed to live here-

sweltering in a chaos

that ain’t for my

sake.

Unwilling as I am to bear the responsibility

of accumulated force.

.

Collective destiny can only be spread

so thin.

Before I reach for the knife-

To cut off the other twisted wing

and plummet

all the way back to the sweet earth.

.

They’re flying us somewhere

and I did not elect to go right into the mad eye of

the sun

.

In The State my momma don’t love me-

I am never enough

Laying down looking at the clouds

certain of my calculus that to survive

here would

cost me bails of my dignity

an amount of my humanity that I could not do to expel

Coraline James Seksinsky is a musician, writer, and begrudging worker who’s lived the vast majority of her life in Cheshire County, New Hampshire. Currently, she resides in middle Tennessee with her boyfriend in an old farmhouse.


Fifth Estate #417, Winter 2025