Terry L. Kennedy
Listen
It takes patience for something good to turn clear and true: and I don’t wish for my love returned, not
anymore―dreaming each night it was all mistake. The mind moves toward wakefulness, tunes to the
record left on all night, the scrape of the street sweeps through the screened door; otherwise, it’s
unseasonably quiet―no birds, the pollen a dampening yellow. Today I’ve learned the measure of a
season’s distance, discovered the heart I knew I had; a truth beguiled. The birds return with their summer
mantra: sand & salt, salt & sun―my heart’s healed over. Would you have been, in other times, the music
that seems to haunt these lines? This is what I’ve learned of possibility: you left me with what you tried to
save me from; and I am equal to that rejection: the mockingbird whose mimicked song is still an arrow that
seeks the heart.
Tin
It’s a long time to wait for a snapshot she had no reason to send. Perhaps her old camera finally refused to
answer its calling. Perhaps she moved from apartment to apartment, house to house, hoping to find just the
right background. Perhaps each time she set up the tripod, she became so enraptured by the natural beauty
off in the far distance that she just couldn’t bear to place herself in it. Perhaps, on the morning she took
this, she woke up dreaming of all of the lives that she left behind. The picture she sent is black & white:
and from the way that she looks toward the edge of the landscape, you can imagine how yellow the ripened
lemons; and off on the peak of that distant mountain, the snow is melting―tears that run until they join the
river that cuts the town in the valley below. Maybe just then she thought to remember the first night your
puppy slept away from its litter; how her tiny whimpers grew persistent and loud until she burst to a howl.
This was a moment when nothing else mattered―the depths of loneliness easily answered with the simplest
of acts: holding head to chest. Maybe when she awoke, the grass was so green with the morning dew that
the lemons were singing in the peak of their tartness―but not for her; and so she took it, freezing forever,
her unending song, in hopes of finding your distant heart.
Complicated Mathematics
Make it seven years ago. Meet me in the middle of the street. I know I’ll be wobbly―a bit unsure, like
blackbirds in the vineyard just after harvest. But you, you will get it right: the cheekbones, breasts; your
voice glowing like maples in fall, like now. It’s just the disorder―the earliness of it all. It worries me. The
greenness, the focus it takes to tread water; everything reduced to the sound of the ocean trapped in a
shell, which is just to say: when your voice breaks free, becomes that one clear note, I will be afraid. But
then you’ll appear as you should―like tulips in spring, and we’ll agree that the sky looks bluer in the
morning, unpolluted, as sunset speaks beauty to the night.
Terry L. Kennedy is the author the chapbook, Until the Clouds Shatter the Light That Plates Our Lives published by Jeanne Duval Edtions of Atlanta, GA in the Fall of 2012. A new collection, New River Breakdown, is forthcoming from Unicorn Press in 2013. His work appears or is forthcoming in a variety of literary journals and magazines including Cave Wall, from the Fishouse, Oxford American, Southern Review, and Waccamaw. He teaches at UNC Greensboro where he is the Associate Director of the Graduate Program in Creative Writing and editor of the online journal, storySouth.
Return to May 2013 Edition
It takes patience for something good to turn clear and true: and I don’t wish for my love returned, not
anymore―dreaming each night it was all mistake. The mind moves toward wakefulness, tunes to the
record left on all night, the scrape of the street sweeps through the screened door; otherwise, it’s
unseasonably quiet―no birds, the pollen a dampening yellow. Today I’ve learned the measure of a
season’s distance, discovered the heart I knew I had; a truth beguiled. The birds return with their summer
mantra: sand & salt, salt & sun―my heart’s healed over. Would you have been, in other times, the music
that seems to haunt these lines? This is what I’ve learned of possibility: you left me with what you tried to
save me from; and I am equal to that rejection: the mockingbird whose mimicked song is still an arrow that
seeks the heart.
Tin
It’s a long time to wait for a snapshot she had no reason to send. Perhaps her old camera finally refused to
answer its calling. Perhaps she moved from apartment to apartment, house to house, hoping to find just the
right background. Perhaps each time she set up the tripod, she became so enraptured by the natural beauty
off in the far distance that she just couldn’t bear to place herself in it. Perhaps, on the morning she took
this, she woke up dreaming of all of the lives that she left behind. The picture she sent is black & white:
and from the way that she looks toward the edge of the landscape, you can imagine how yellow the ripened
lemons; and off on the peak of that distant mountain, the snow is melting―tears that run until they join the
river that cuts the town in the valley below. Maybe just then she thought to remember the first night your
puppy slept away from its litter; how her tiny whimpers grew persistent and loud until she burst to a howl.
This was a moment when nothing else mattered―the depths of loneliness easily answered with the simplest
of acts: holding head to chest. Maybe when she awoke, the grass was so green with the morning dew that
the lemons were singing in the peak of their tartness―but not for her; and so she took it, freezing forever,
her unending song, in hopes of finding your distant heart.
Complicated Mathematics
Make it seven years ago. Meet me in the middle of the street. I know I’ll be wobbly―a bit unsure, like
blackbirds in the vineyard just after harvest. But you, you will get it right: the cheekbones, breasts; your
voice glowing like maples in fall, like now. It’s just the disorder―the earliness of it all. It worries me. The
greenness, the focus it takes to tread water; everything reduced to the sound of the ocean trapped in a
shell, which is just to say: when your voice breaks free, becomes that one clear note, I will be afraid. But
then you’ll appear as you should―like tulips in spring, and we’ll agree that the sky looks bluer in the
morning, unpolluted, as sunset speaks beauty to the night.
Terry L. Kennedy is the author the chapbook, Until the Clouds Shatter the Light That Plates Our Lives published by Jeanne Duval Edtions of Atlanta, GA in the Fall of 2012. A new collection, New River Breakdown, is forthcoming from Unicorn Press in 2013. His work appears or is forthcoming in a variety of literary journals and magazines including Cave Wall, from the Fishouse, Oxford American, Southern Review, and Waccamaw. He teaches at UNC Greensboro where he is the Associate Director of the Graduate Program in Creative Writing and editor of the online journal, storySouth.
Return to May 2013 Edition