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.


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