"Debts and Carrots" by Kenton K. Yee

I resisted form: drove a mile at 3 am to Safeway for one carrot, bought cheese instead. The cashier asked how I was, as if I were fine. Back in the office, shuffling numbers that wouldn’t add up, I dozed off on a raft hitched to three big mouth trout that wouldn’t swim, like I couldn’t swim, so of course my grip slipped and I’m back to snack wraps that were black cat bad. Accounting taught me people don’t count. I remember a riverbed too replete to sleep on, a big mouth trout picked clean, and three clouds looking like a flock of unshorn sheep.

Kenton K. Yee’s recent poems appear (or will soon) in Plume Poetry, Threepenny Review, TAB Journal, I-70 Review, Hawaii Pacific Review, Terrain.org, Mantis, Sugar House Review, Constellations, Valparaiso Poetry Review, and Rattle, among others. Kenton holds a PhD from UCLA and law and business degrees from Stanford. He writes from Northern California.

See Yee's other poem published in The Broadkill Review when it goes live on July 1 2025.