The Hard Season
Rain-glutted, the stream
splays to the base
of the retaining wall.
Good. Now you have reason
to pray. Of all the birds
watching from winter-stripped
trees, vultures
are kindest, killing
nothing. This is a true
measure of things.
Don’t hold back now, have
chocolate, throw extra
kindling on, even though
skies urge cover & hoarding.
When mice pitter in
for crumbs, compliment
their small feet and fitting
ways. When your mouth
houses a curse, swallow,
think how you once
had no words at all
yet managed
your hungers. Everything
that comes, passes.
Everything that passes
rakes its fingers through
and passes.
Sacrifices
The poem said: Now we must all eat beautiful women.
The poem-cutter cut out that line
and took it home. He read it over and over
then sautéed the words in butter
and ate them.
Can this be true? By my calculation over forty
thousand hours have passed since that moment
and still I see her and the bell of that dress,
not a scrim in sight, just sheets snapping […]
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___________________________________
Kathleen Lynch’s first book, Hinge, won The Black Zinnias Poetry Book Award and her second book, Lucky Witness, was published by Blue Light Press. Her chapbooks include How to Build and Owl and Alterations of Rising, both in the Select Poets Series from Small Poetry Press; No Spring Chicken, winner of the White Eagle Coffee Store Press Chapbook Prize; and Kathleen Lynch Greatest Hits: 1985-2001 in the Pudding House Press Greatest Hits Series. Her poem, “Abracadabra”, won a 2018 Pushcart Prize. Kathleen’s poetry and prose has appeared many journals, including Poetry, Passager, Poetry East, and Spillway, and seven anthologies. Kathleen lives in Sacramento, California.
“Hard Season,” “Sacrifices,” and “Yardwork” originally appeared in Poetry, Small Poetry Press, and Peregrine, respectively.
He ate them and now he is stuffed
with the words he has learned by heart.
He has learned a new hunger
that is an old hunger
and he is covered with shame. […]
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Yard Work
My mother prowled the yard, winding wires around bare
stems of rose bushes, attaching Woolworth’s plastic roses—
her flowered house dress puffed out full,
hair lifting like flames. I watched, embarrassed
by how tacky, how pathetic
but it had been a bad spring all around
what with Dad’s drinking and with nothing
blooming, and from where I stood
I had to admit they looked pretty. The distance
between shame and pride is so mutable we use
both words for the same thing:
She has no shame. She has no pride.
Can this be true? By my calculation over forty
thousand hours have passed since that moment
and still I see her and the bell of that dress,
not a scrim in sight, just sheets snapping […]
Subscribers can read the full version by logging in. |
___________________________________
Kathleen Lynch’s first book, Hinge, won The Black Zinnias Poetry Book Award and her second book, Lucky Witness, was published by Blue Light Press. Her chapbooks include How to Build and Owl and Alterations of Rising, both in the Select Poets Series from Small Poetry Press; No Spring Chicken, winner of the White Eagle Coffee Store Press Chapbook Prize; and Kathleen Lynch Greatest Hits: 1985-2001 in the Pudding House Press Greatest Hits Series. Her poem, “Abracadabra”, won a 2018 Pushcart Prize. Kathleen’s poetry and prose has appeared many journals, including Poetry, Passager, Poetry East, and Spillway, and seven anthologies. Kathleen lives in Sacramento, California.
“Hard Season,” “Sacrifices,” and “Yardwork” originally appeared in Poetry, Small Poetry Press, and Peregrine, respectively.