Kjerstin Anne Kauffman
The End of the Month
House, husk of ME, dust up your ladder;
Stars tip down, nervously lie:
Foster the seed, fussing, an infant, a sack;
And nobody bellows or murmurs, nobody wakes.
Today: today: today: toady and blank.
The corners are crowded, the niches poppy
and lotus weight. The church in the window;
The black-sheeted bed; the impressionist’s vase
—I POP to them all. Don’t try to repeat. Repeat
just the same. The kernel of fire goes up, it’s out.
The walls, they proffer the space, they polish the rag.
The dodder is so many atoms, the ladder deflates.
Kjerstin Anne Kauffman holds an MFA from The Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University (2014), where she taught literature and creative writing before moving recently to Valparaiso, IN. Her poems appear in or are forthcoming from Gulf Coast, 32 Poems, Unsplendid, and elsewhere. Her essays and reviews appear in or are forthcoming from The American Poetry Review, The Cresset, and The Collagist, among others.
Return to March 2016 Edition
House, husk of ME, dust up your ladder;
Stars tip down, nervously lie:
Foster the seed, fussing, an infant, a sack;
And nobody bellows or murmurs, nobody wakes.
Today: today: today: toady and blank.
The corners are crowded, the niches poppy
and lotus weight. The church in the window;
The black-sheeted bed; the impressionist’s vase
—I POP to them all. Don’t try to repeat. Repeat
just the same. The kernel of fire goes up, it’s out.
The walls, they proffer the space, they polish the rag.
The dodder is so many atoms, the ladder deflates.
Kjerstin Anne Kauffman holds an MFA from The Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University (2014), where she taught literature and creative writing before moving recently to Valparaiso, IN. Her poems appear in or are forthcoming from Gulf Coast, 32 Poems, Unsplendid, and elsewhere. Her essays and reviews appear in or are forthcoming from The American Poetry Review, The Cresset, and The Collagist, among others.
Return to March 2016 Edition