Two Poems Recently Published -- Four More "Accepted for Publication"

A poem begins like a wild apple growing -- from a delicate blossom that's around briefly.

 

A good day for me is when I write a poem that I feel is -- yes, good. It's also nice to have them published. That's the whipped cream on the hot fudge brownie sundae. Or, with the upcoming Caledonia County Fair and the Robillard family's historic gifts in mind, the vanilla ice cream on the apple crisp.

If you haven't taken time to follow the links that I place on Facebook, here are the two most recent published poems of mine. I hope they echo in your thoughts to something vital of your own.

In the summer issue of New Feathers Anthology, which I hope you'll visit by tapping here to see the amazing image they've paired with this, is "My Mother, 1937."

My Mother, 1937

 

Bewildered farm girl with a dying mother (cancer, too late):

ignored, she clung to Lucky Lindbergh’s transatlantic flight,

hoarded newspaper articles about Amelia Earhardt,

refused to beg her cocky cousins for attention—

she could claim the future, sky high, better than theirs. When

death landed as predicted, love retreated into

the unreal hardness of one frozen knuckle (they made her

kiss it). Amelia, she told herself. Amelia would do this

without falling. Her cousins watched, whispered.

 

Amelia, a borrowed badge, a resonant insistence. Next month

her father said “Your mother’s cousin Ruth arrives on Tuesday,

to be your new mother.” Thrust a photo into her hand. That night

she lay sleepless in the bed, next to where her real mother

used to sit, stroke her hair, sing good night. The next evening

the radio hissed, coughed, spat out news: Earhardt lost. Airplane

vanished. Fog. Feared drowned. Lost, lost, lost.

“Stepmother” came just like Hansel and Gretel’s story, strict, tall,

declining soft clothes or embraces. Never call her Mommy!

Be a lady, little Joan. No more running or jumping. No lady wears

goggles or a helmet. Gloves are for Sundays. Not air controls.

 

Each night, after dark, her heart and mind refused to behave.

Flying, falling, weeping.

 

BK

 

This will also be available in print! Watch for news of that.

 

There's a very different poem in After Happy Hours Review, inspired by the gift of a 3-inch wooden box with hinged lid that contains three sand dollars. (Thank you, neighbors!) It keys in with a very dangerous experience I've described in my memoir pieces on Medium, where someone I now call The Villain hoped to terrify me on a small boat out in Casco Bay, Maine. It was quite effective but not as quickly as he wanted. Well, we all make some bad choices, and learn from them to make better ones.

 

 

Sand Dollars in a Small Wooden Box 

 

This is wealth: three delicate sand dollars, gray, pale,

tucked in a tiny wooden box. Souvenirs of a friend’s

beach rambles. Surfaces shedding fine gold-gray sand

with every touch. See, she whispered, here is the mouth

centered within the five-petaled surface. And here,

the anus. Algae in, remainders out. I, who never held

a live sand dollar, never witnessed one propel itself

through wet sand,  spurting, spined, moist, stroked again

the rough emery finish, the grained surface, and settled these

(three, for luck or love) into their container.

 

The mind, they say, is a curious thing; the brain, surely so.

Wet, questioning, curled in its own tidal pool, saltwater

and moon collaborating. My fingers are sliced open by a net

of knowledge; dampen my morning with dreamy details.

In its dry casket, a sand dollar is a skeleton of a sea urchin

bereft of nourishment and moisture. Of impulse. It had spines.

It digested. It explored, left larvae, expelled exhilaration

plucking a single note of life, life, life. Hunger accompanies

harmony. Lift this to the tongue. The sand dollar tastes of

salt and secrets. See, here is my mouth. Lost on a raw

Atlantic beach, say in Maine, where cold winds rip

and the surge of water overwhelms, I screamed. Once,

someone tried to drown me. Now my fingers, five parts

scratching and scrabbling, spread like the sand dollar—

scrape at the sand, scramble toward skeletal certainty.

When I’m finished, I’ll wait in that little wooden box.

 

BK

 

If you like to listen to a poet's voice with the words, tap here for the read-aloud version. 

 

And oh yes, I have four more "accepted for publication" in the future. That's like, umm, homemade chocolate chip cookies waiting in the freezer for a special moment.

At the Caledonia County Fair ...