Feel It

Patricia Lockwood

My husband instructed me,

As I brought him his third Uncrustable.

“It feels like a frozen moor.”

It did. You really are a poet,

He said. Jami had been reading

To me earlier from The Waves,

And I misheard one line as

The senses have wind.

They did. Immediately I saw

It all: white manes and horses

Switching their sight from eye

To eye as they high-stepped

Across the horizon. Breezes

Move in the senses, and mistrals,

The breath blows so cold

That nothing can grow,

And you freeze in each green

Blade of grass. Peter the Pervert

Believed we had started talking

About the page too much.

I’m actually a really famous rapper,

He told me, heated, handsome,

And he was, in Hungary.

In retrospect I agree.

It began, maybe, with The blood

Jet is poetry. Typewriters

Were good, they kept us

Concrete, but now in our

Pure fields of whiteout

It is impossible to leave

A mistake—though that’s

What poetry is in the first place,

A land where the senses

Can bend. We are going

Into summer. Rita Dove

Is on the dance floor.

My husband squeezes

His third Uncrustable—

“It really does feel like

A moor.” His breath melting

The cold dimension where

We cannot do it any longer.


how did this poem begin for you?


May 6, 2025: I had just finished writing a long essay about Sylvia Plath. In the meantime, my husband, Jason, had developed a heavy addiction to the popular premade crustless PB&J sandwiches for children known as Uncrustables (chronicled in his own masterwork, “I Eat Today,” reproduced below). One night, after taking a THC gummy, he asked me to bring him one—his third of the evening. “Feel it,” he said to me, blazed. “It feels like a frozen moor,” I said, not blazed at all. He started to laugh and delivered this quote: “You really are a poet.”

I Eat Today


Double espresso

Cycling gel

Cycling gel

Half bagel

Double espresso

Large croissant

Half bagel

Quad espresso

Potato chips

Two hot dog

Alkoholfree beer

Grilled chicken sandwich

Fries

Uncrustable

Minze

Spicy chicken sandwich

Spicy chicken sandwich

Minze

Uncrustable

Uncrustable

Uncrustable

Patricia Lockwood is the author of five books, most recently Will There Ever Be Another You.
Originally published:
December 28, 2025

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