USA

KALynch@aol.com

IMPETUS
You must change your life.
-Rilke-

Begin anywhere: sleep
on his side of the bed tonight.

Tomorrow walk as though your head
is filled with helium & your spine
the string that holds it to the earth.

Fill a gallery with something
you have not yet made.
Name your show I Promise.

Buy a large piece of blue
paper. The shade should be vast
and deep and remind you
of nothing. Roll it carefully
and carry it home on the bus
cradled in your arm.
Try not to pretend
it is your child.

Don't cry, but if you must
don't stop. Tears
are only water and salt.
You felt this way once before
when you first moved
from fluid into air.

It is no one's fault
you are more than halfway there.
Surely you know that and are grateful
to have come so far. Just go.
Just keep going.


Published in Reed Magazine

IN LINE

Sometimes you just wing
your neck around
like you're a dancer

not a statue.
You're in line
at the checkout counter

when something seizes you
like a bird plucked
from air by a bullet.

Nothing in your life
has prepared you.
You see yourself

seeing yourself,
your body a bright
column, every cell

ready to blaze.
In the interstice, that
airless measured beat,

you stand between what
you have been and
what you might…

…but no, nothing
you can do promotes you
to a higher degree.

Oh, the quickening
back into the hurt
breast of your body.

Oh, the things
in your basket:
wine, bread,

a little meat.


Published in The Laurel Review

NEITHER

A woman in a white slip
watches at her window.
She shades her eyes.
The sun at my back
burns her building half
gold. I cannot make out
her mouth but will say
she is smiling. Why not?
She is in her body
and standing. Everything
that took in the cold
last night is now hot
enough to hurt.
If asphalt were water
she could wade
barefoot across to me.
We could talk. Or choose
a fruit from the bowl, eat
in silence. Neither
happy nor unhappy.
I don't know her
but will say she likes
being here. She thinks
suffering a great power
and not suffering, greater.
I will make this up
for her. The way we
have to invent stories
for people in the pure
silence of paintings.
The way we have to
make up everything.

Published in Spoon River Poetry Review

© All Copyright, Kathleen Lynch.
All Rights Reserved. Printed By Permission.