Poem

Maybe you are a prude if you dislike sex

talk, all the glory of communion hexed

by common language, the internal model

ruined by constant tinkering and thought.

Maybe the world was already vocal and foolish

before Adam came along, naming names; still,

Eve must have been embarrassed by the words

she had not chosen for herself. 

Yet, the world remains the world itself, feeding 

back each silent moment to the moment 

before Eden was not enough.

[LSS, 6/30/21]

Subject Matter

Trying to understand 

the shape of rising steam,

the mirror image

of an empty room,

where I might be able

to find you tomorrow.

[LSS, 6/30/21]

Where a Drunken Bee Drones a Holy Syllable

The six-syllable word 

has been reduced to one

orphan syllable that carries 

the memory of languages 

I have no need 

to translate or transmit.

[LSS, 6/28/21]

Jigsaw Echo Map

Acres of intentions

scrunched into a deciduous

hometown and paper maps

waiting, wondering when.

[LSS 6/28/21]

Plains State

Drought-stricken trees 

lifting their lighter-than-air 

limbs to sky, rooted to earth, 

souls never forgiven.

[LSS, 6/28/21]

Dark Sky 

Cumulus clouds weighing 

down our bodies so we 

won't float away just yet.

[LSS, 6/28/21]

Leaving

staying in place
or placing one foot
behind the other

placating the confusion
or opting to remain
in the melee

recording the rearrangement
of dinner table placeholders
and dance cards

[RK, 6/26/21]

Passive-Aggressive Chess Set

The ploy, the plum.
The plumb, the play.
The geometric plane.

The punishment, the prayer.
The peach, the pendulum.
The praying mantis.

The pushcart, the platitude.
The panacea, the passenger.
The house plant.

[RK, 6/26/21]

The Jigsaw Puzzle

1. Analytic

every box is incomplete
I find missing pieces
in unlikely places
chewed, waterlogged, frayed
scientifically mutated
into straight-edged geometric shapes
unfit for original intentions

2. Creative

triangles, heptagons, rhomboids
the occasional dodecahedron
effortlessly arranged into
new ways of seeing
illuminating through
altered states of perception

[RK, 6/26/21]

Echo

shallow coastal waters, acres of sea grass
the horizon is a line on a scrim and clouds
remind me of textbook images from art school
en plein air Impressionism, the natural world
scrunched onto 30 by 40 centimeter canvases
elusive, attentive, alliterative
lazy clinging memories evaporate
above the Gulf of Mexico

[RK, 6/26/21]

Map

I could not imagine your movements
through the flat Midwest
wheat and corn fields
weathered brick red barns
elusive prairie light
deciduous hometown trees and cattails

pastel and linear paper maps
scrolled through my mind, and
took the edge off waiting, wondering,
and why-ing

[RK, 6/26/21]

Found Poem

Attention, Dear Comrades!

The city council of people’s deputies reports that,
due to the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant,
an unfavorable radiation situation is developing in the city of Pripyat.
Party and Soviet bodies, military units are taking the necessary measures.
However, in order to ensure complete safety of people,
and, above all, children,
it is necessary to conduct a temporary evacuation of city residents
to the nearest settlements of the Kiev region.

To do this, every apartment house today, on the twenty-seventh of April,
starting at fourteen zero-zero, buses will be served accompanied by 

police officers and representatives of the city executive committee.
It is recommended to take with you documents, essential things,
as well as, for the first time, food.

The leaders of enterprises and institutions have determined a circle of workers
who remain in place to ensure the normal functioning of the enterprises of the city.
All residential buildings for the period of evacuation will be guarded by police officers.
Comrades, temporarily leaving your home, please do not forget to close the windows,
turn off electrical and gas appliances, turn off the water taps.

We ask to keep calm, organization and order during the temporary evacuation.

(Radio announcement of the evacuation of Pripyat, Ukraine, April 27, 1986.)

[RK, 6/8/21]

What Did The Child

when sky and silhouettes bring up memories
when memories muddle in loopy spirals, enter daydreams
reviewed so many times they lose shape and substance
all that remains is the moment

what did the child think when winter skies
first presented, first enveloped mornings of gray light
and the rattle of dried oak leaves on a tree made a
solid impression?

I’ve brought them into focus so often, the images are frozen,
colder than any winter morning,
solid as brown, leaf-shaped sheets of lead

what did the child think when dew covered a lawn
and dozens of spider webs glittered in angled light?
what did the child think when wind and heat
eroded and smoothed a low wall of snow chunks?

what did the child think as flames ate trash and paper
in an upended cement pipe, while he fed twigs into the fire
just to wonder at that power, the unnamed
transience of all matter, of all that made sense?

[RK, 6/6/21]

What is That Ticking Sound

it never stops
stopwatch click
watching cumulus (I’ve said it again!) clouds
for inspiration
more of a trigger, impetus, or starting point
tick tick your clock is tops

it never stops
I’ll go all the way to Nova Scotia
one hundred times a day
and it won’t change anything
no one will notice!

I’ll laugh and no one will hear
I’ll cross the channel between
Dartmouth and Halifax
twice a day and the ferry will not notice
water will not notice
security guards will not notice
you of all people will not notice
I will not

[RK, 6/5/21]


Prairie (Summer)

laid out like a hand-woven carpet
lit with blue and gray pinon jays
yellow and black meadowlarks

perpetual snow topped peaks
wind scouring rutted roads
sun-bleached houses, sheds, corral fences
prairie dogs gnawing the roots
of Russian olive seedlings
garden splashes of tenderness

a beautiful Colorado potato beetle
big as a quarter
I shove my hands into mud
pull out new tubers, crisp as apples
pome de terre!
ripe corn and sparrowhawk
hose water pumped from layers above bedrock
flows between rows
a dusting of hillside snow
evaporates in minutes

[RK, 6/5/21]


Prairie (Autumn)

cold days
I harvest green, yellow, purple beans
beets, potatoes, sunchokes
a wheelbarrow of cornstalks
bushels of tomatoes
the house smells of vinegar and dill
moths pollinate sunflower whorls
owls snatch mice, voles, wood rats

jays congregate in fractal flocks
dried grass quivers in the wind
shadows change the colors of the world
the artwork reflects these changes
I change the changing colors
ink tins full of commercial light
the season seeps into me and the etching plates
oxidize, remind me to attend to
each yellow composite, gust, wing

[RK, 6/5/21]


Prairie (Winter)

brown grass stalks jut up from frozen dawns
quiver in the wind
still below the horizon, the sun hits high clouds
red and orange in the darkness
steam rises from buckets of hot water
sagging barbed wire takes on meanings
beyond my understanding, I only
know to look and listen
stillness illuminated by the lack of anything green
how the chill seeps through walls,
layers of clothing, wool socks
down to paintbrushes swirling in cups
of ice water

[RK, 6/5/21]


Prairie (Spring)

the lines between winter and spring shift
I’m growing plants in a sun room
tomatoes flowering when I move them to the ground
strings form grids, plants obediently rise in straight lines
songbirds, snakes, and horned lizards
inevitable grasshoppers, butterfly and moth pollinators

early morning breezes through studio windows and door
the smell of acrylic paint, oil based inks, solvents
contrasts with the prairie’s damp perfume
the contrast between Flagstaff and Phoenix
cement and red fescue, honest clouds and parking meters
the yo-yo effect, an elastic band
connecting me to and pulling me in one direction
hundreds of nighthawks perpetuate
a crepuscular afternoon sky

[RK, 6/5/21]

A-76

an emoji of a half-and-half hourglass
an emoji of an empty-and-full hourglass
pencil shavings in a cereal bowl
seashells neatly labeled with Latin nomenclature
dozens of spice jars clamor for attention

around me people change like coastal climates
I struggle to cling, find ease in letting go
imagination begins to feed on itself
a biblical deluge in the first days of summer
feeds something no longer green

we drift into the Wendell Sea, surrounded
by fantastic whales, seals, and penguins
Latin names fail me, the local library
lacks proper and up-to-date field guides,
adjustable itineraries for the next year

“sands of time” is achingly trite, but
succinctly explains my curiosity about
my once-full portmanteau, mysteriously emptied
yet still heavy
with what remains unsaid

“In mid-May 2021, A-76, currently the world's largest iceberg, calved from the Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf in Antarctica.”—Wikipedia

[RK, 6/4/21]

359 Days (The Winter of Our Discontent)

although it is dread summer
I’ve carefully labeled the seeds
 
viable as pyramid papyrus
dry as an imaginary skeleton
 
the compost, winter wheat,
edged furrows, biblical deluges
 
the happenstance of words and
divination of meanings
 
edges of another season
harvest, and sowing
 
[RK, 6/4/21]

Conspiracy Theory Decried
 
this island in the waves
this footloose ship
this respite from the think tanks
this arrow dancing around the target
this endlessly creased road map
this seductive Möbius strip
this summa cum laude
this Goldilocks Zone
this elusive moment
 
[RK, 6/4/21]

Thunder

your chill is my storm
your lamb is my raccoon
your warm summer Mediterranean is my humid subtropical

reduced to fossil shells of Pompeian lava
these animals and plants follow us
and bang against the barricades

[RK, 6/4/21]


359 Days (Perception)

it excited you when I wrote to you about the ghost of Georgia O’Keeffe
I clearly pictured the muddy late winter Rio Grande in my mind’s eye

found valid interest in reliving once achingly in-the-moment moments
picked up threads dropped thousands if not hundreds of thousands of times

still reaching out for the memory of chilled high desert satellite nights
still clinging to the narrow saguaro shadow and fluctuating raptor silhouettes

[RK, 6/4/21]


Rain Shadow

the tsar was beneficent to sycophants
but in Yekaterinburg the Bolsheviks killed
Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna

your analogy of rain shadows and clenched fists
reminds me of history lessons, hard to forget
easy to fudge and manipulate

are you sure you want to rise to the occasion?
think of the myriad fungus clinging to the underside
of your best laid plans

[RK, 6/4/21]

The Ashes of Joan of Arc

spontaneous combustion
leaves you with singed leaves
parted chapters, resolute footnotes

I know you fashion char and soot
into shapely chalks, make lists
of books you will never read

[RK, 6/4/21]


Colorization

if I minutely record vagaries of light and shadow
if I remember or think I remember moments

how does my perception shift so easily
between B & W, and the artist’s color wheel?

[RK, 6/4/21]


Sequence

decades ago I learned how rodent urine
was the vector for a prairie hantavirus scare

how mice pee virtually twenty-four-seven
and move around like claim jumpers

I’d forgotten all of this information until
you wrote about the return of your boomerang

[RK. 6/4/21]

The Ghost in the Machine

the terminal anode connection, red for negative,
green for go, forest, cypress, scented letters
drifting through the postal systems

rough edges exposed, rust, tetanus, I’ll need a
booster shot, a panacea for
the R-complex innuendos

I describe Arabic script and you are confused
my fingers make arabesques in the air
I’ve no idea what I might be writing

Nonsense, or, more specifically, meandering
French curves, signifying nothing,
tales told by a proverbial Chaucerian idiot

[RK, 6/3/21]


357 Days

After hundreds of attachment
s
there is this single unopened file
a record of slipped away decades

scraps of paper fall out randomly
lined note paper, weathered envelopes,
eight-cent stamps, lazy intentionally cursive,
song quotes, sloopy printing

green and white Newport cigarette packs
used cars, the overweening sense of
camaraderie and the
sense of foreboding

synchronized with limitless expression
I’ll skip parenthood, mortgages, and divorces,
focus on the blank pages at the end of clever journals
more than we, what we called it

[RK, 6/3/21]

Conspiracy Theory

You might think 

of the world

as a free 

and vast ocean,

but with every

wave you fall

into the next group 

think tank.

[LSS, 6/2/21]

357 Days

I’m telling you 

what it’s like here,

because I am here 

and you are there,

and it’s been 

almost a year since 

I began telling you 

what it’s like here

while you are there.

[LSS, 6/2/21]

Open House

Where is the room 

where all of the mirrors 

show where you have been 

and where you should be 

going?

[LSS, 6/1/21]