Stephanie Kartalopoulos
Like a Thousand Paper Cranes on the Vast River
Instead of wondering about the things that begin
to matter less and less, I wonder if you are the only one
to understand the ways I have grown quiet around other people.
Or the ways I wish I could stand firm like the cypress trees
that haunt everywhere I turn. They’re stealth in an evening wind.
You are one of my dead. When can I let you go? I cannot begin
to know the force of a life without the eclipse of what I love
and have lost in you, the things I have yet to learn to love
in myself and release like papers folded with a thousand hopes
scrawled inside, the thousand dreams of my being
ghost-like and slight, the girl whose life is beyond heft.
At the Edge of Faith, All Stories Seem Dead and Wonderful
Even the ones about the cold-tongued nuns.
Even the inner circle that has lost its proper evidence.
A mother cowers in the middle
of her own distance. Somewhere, a schoolgirl
drowns. Her father crouches at the edge
of the lake, mends from his chair
at the dry goods store, wonders what it would be
to go off duty from this kind of pain.
It seems that nothing can be done. It seems
there are no more gentle words.
Darkness needles its way through a fading image
to the room I have prepared, its smooth sheets,
my invitation to where the people meet.
Stephanie Kartalopoulos earned her PhD in Creative Writing and Literature from the University of Missouri, where she was a Creative Writing Fellow and a genre editor for Center: A Journal of the Literary Arts. Her poems appear widely in journals that include Phoebe,
Barn Owl Review, Sou'wester, Harpur Palate, Pebble Lake Review, and Contrary. Stephanie is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Kansas State University in Manhattan, KS.
Return to January 2014 Edition
Instead of wondering about the things that begin
to matter less and less, I wonder if you are the only one
to understand the ways I have grown quiet around other people.
Or the ways I wish I could stand firm like the cypress trees
that haunt everywhere I turn. They’re stealth in an evening wind.
You are one of my dead. When can I let you go? I cannot begin
to know the force of a life without the eclipse of what I love
and have lost in you, the things I have yet to learn to love
in myself and release like papers folded with a thousand hopes
scrawled inside, the thousand dreams of my being
ghost-like and slight, the girl whose life is beyond heft.
At the Edge of Faith, All Stories Seem Dead and Wonderful
Even the ones about the cold-tongued nuns.
Even the inner circle that has lost its proper evidence.
A mother cowers in the middle
of her own distance. Somewhere, a schoolgirl
drowns. Her father crouches at the edge
of the lake, mends from his chair
at the dry goods store, wonders what it would be
to go off duty from this kind of pain.
It seems that nothing can be done. It seems
there are no more gentle words.
Darkness needles its way through a fading image
to the room I have prepared, its smooth sheets,
my invitation to where the people meet.
Stephanie Kartalopoulos earned her PhD in Creative Writing and Literature from the University of Missouri, where she was a Creative Writing Fellow and a genre editor for Center: A Journal of the Literary Arts. Her poems appear widely in journals that include Phoebe,
Barn Owl Review, Sou'wester, Harpur Palate, Pebble Lake Review, and Contrary. Stephanie is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Kansas State University in Manhattan, KS.
Return to January 2014 Edition