PoetryMagazine.com
Since 1996 Volume XXI Kim Shuck The photo credit is Doug Salin Photography 2017
Kim Shuck is a poet, educator and visual artist. Her first
manuscript earned a Diane Decorah award in 2005 and became her first
book Smuggling Cherokee. Her most recent book is Clouds
Running In. She has recently been named the 7th poet laureate of
San Francisco.
American Dreams
Sedna wrapped in northern current
Dances seals dances
Whales
The four Harley riders of renewal
Hope, Reason, Creativity and Love
Crest the rise into Monument Valley at dawn
Curled in the tent
Smell of pavement
Memory of diner food
Fingertip to fingertip to nose tip to toe tip
PTSD to privilege, fantasy to faith, our dreams
Arranged one massacre to another can span the continent
Relic
These are the buildings marked for death
Community of angles
Relic shapes
Cast from life when vital
Not fallen but
Leaning into an unlucky
Inconvenient
Light
Marked and marking
Accidental tracks
Fossils
Unintended letters
We used to call community
Harvest
You must gather and we have
Collected memories
Rebuilt old stages
Buried faces in old blankets
It takes
Obsession a
Willingness to let go of the fantasy
It is not the best who will save us
Not gods
Not the famous
Salvation will come when we all show up
In our torn shoes
Empty
Your empty bottles
Work sore
Partially used life
A tickle of things
One and another
Not covet
Poise
Kitchen table ceremony
Singing and singing
Protein chains
Come close to the engines of life
Come closer
Community
In the wards and wings and
Yes
The fields and neighborhoods
You are song and
Song
Must be this fierce a
Tensile world
Feet and unsteady smiles in a cupped hand
The tilt of you the
Occupied chair the
Spiral path of waiting
We used to call it community
More than coloring book emotion and
Patronizing gesture
More than deciding who belongs to whom
To where
We are not waiting to be filled in
We will call it community
We need it to be community
None of these poems have been published elsewhere Copyright, 2018, Kim Shuck. All Rights Reserved. PoetryMagazine.com is published by Gilford Multimedia LLC www.nycny.net |
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