Writing Crop Circles

This was difficult in the Midwest
where small, irregular quadrilaterals
defined the agriculture we knew.

Was it any different during your
little house on the prairie decades?

My southwest mountain sojourns
missed the huge desert whorls of
alfalfa, lettuce, and cotton.

I made toxic notes to that effect
in coded language I no longer understand.

Now we go down to ocean shores
where crop circles reinvent themselves
and pulse in fractal waves.

Observers will claim indifference.
We know better.

[RK, 2/7/21]


Partial New Me

All the bottle caps I collected as a child.
All the book clubs I belonged to as a pre-teen.
All the movies I recorded on videotapes from broadcast TV.
All the scratchy library Mozart albums I copied onto cassette tapes.
All the documents I saved on floppy disks.
All the leases, cars, and furniture.
All the friendships and posturing.
All the organic honey and glorious weeds.
All the memorized light and sound.
All the winter constellations.
All the photo albums.

Documented, filed, unfiled, deactivated.
Clean slates, new leaves.
The imagined escape and
watered down revisions.

The upshot shot through with shots.
Blank, blank, blank.

[RK, 2/7/21]


Bad Invalid

WON’T recline or rest
WON’T admit temporary defeat
WON’T allow the milk to curdle

WILL slam a book to the floor
WILL intentionally crush weeds
WILL tear up unsent letters

[RK, 2/7/21]

Coronavirus #4

People are coming down the trail.
Put on the mask.

Alone, take off the mask.
Alone.

Supermarket crowd deserving of
two masks.

Alone, kitchen board games,
comfort food.

Laundry, white cotton,
the perfect clothesline, and
crisp February breeze.

[RK, 2/7/21]

Asemia Epiphany

The illiterate broken dish,
eroded seashell, pencil stub.

The garden slug, pitchfork,
fascicles of firewood.

Like Na'ashjé'íí Asdzáá, the thread unspools
from your hand and runs away.

Caught, you feed the sewing machine.
Language takes hold of your intent.

[RK, 2/7/21]

World’s Largest Ball of String Reconsidered

The life lines of marionettes,
unhinged and predictable.

Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos
laugh into their espressos.

[RK, 2/7/21]