For Corrie

When he put the revolver to the heads of the neighbor's dogs
he didn't know you were only a mile away,
curled in pink and white pajamas,
down the roads of Botetourt that roll like tongues
in soft, wet, unsuspecting mouths.
He didn't think anyone would hear the shots
the high yelps as they tried to get away.
He didn't know the ghost dogs visited your windows
that night and many nights thereafter,
eyes whiter than the moon in full,
snouts wrinkle back, expose foaming teeth,
bristled hair standing as tall as August grass,
still barking, even though he went to silence them,
still barking, even though they were only your mind.

my summer of cherries

i.
everything is
equal sign
something else.

terse statements
sound like a closet
falling out of itself
everything from
baseball bats
to winter coats
sit at your feet.

ii.
a frog along a tall reeded creek curve:
his throat strings vibrate
low inside a hollow neck
the sound of an untuned guitar
a long breathy noise,
moving away from my feet.

if he swallows enough fireflies
he would glow:
be impossible to hide.

iii.
this season
twelve dollars for a pound of cherries
sounds like a bargain
and shoes grow stale
as feet harden for fall
on soft asphalt.
cherry pits pile up in the pail
still red with the tendrils of flesh
that teeth couldn't gnaw away.
far from summer's shadows and
the long necked swans of narrative poetry
the gardener still tends his glass house
plants: yellow when
everything was green.

You move formless in and out of the stripes of light through closed blinds. You are not what you seem, staggering to our cold treblinka bed. Your arms bloat and disappear. Where did you go, my croaky sleep voice calls out. From here you have no eyes. From here I see you in another life-- a dripping grin over a prostrate prisoner, looking to the camera a gentle nod, holding in your palm the teeth you so precisely extracted. The black hooded figure in the doorway who comes for you with electrical wires, a screw driver, a pair of pliers Who comes who comes who comes for the venom smile you didn't even know you had in a life you did know, passing through the space between the dark and the light. Losing yourself, you are enormous, You are nothing. You breathe up my spine. I don't move. I wouldn't dare.

Excerpt from The Cow Caught in Ice, by Ted Genoways

iii. Tideline Debris

She watches for him by the window's leaded glass.
It ripples like tideline debris ringing edges
of summer ponds. As a girl, she crawled through tallgrass,

squeezing pollywogs till they shed their tails. Her ledges
hold vinegar and dillspice while she cooks, but nights
she lowers each jar till a circle forms around

the old Franklin stove. L.C. feeds a split rail-tie,
scavenged from the switchyard, into its grated mouth.
She rises first, her children still tucked in the loft,

and steps softly, now lifting each cold jar to rest
around the skillet. This is the time she covets:
when the stove is cool enough to touch, each hand pressed

hard against its belly to feel inside what's left
and almost breathing. The last four children drowned
in their beds before the pastor could hold their heads

under. Jaundice, doctor said, their stomachs so round
they were ready to pop. She can't live for the dead;
seven live mouths hang open. She slips back to bed--

two minutes till the coffee boils--but keeps one eye
on that orange egg purling across the frozen pane,
like watching her dad light stars in the nighttime sky

making constellations of sheep pens, against rain
and wolves and the darkness that never died in years
after he did. Go on sun, get up, sweeten snow

into warm rivers. It's all of those things she fears:
glass is fire and sand, water expands in the cold.
Seconds now, hold your breath--the kettle's lips explode.

Because talking about writing camp seems more apropos here

The last two nights of camp, we have a mandatory student reading, which is actually lots of fun and not as boring as I remember it. Maybe it's less boring because of CLICHE BINGO (otherwise called, Cube Poetry), in which we make boards with squares like "Blood" or "beating heart" or "I caught my breath" and have to listen very intently to make sure we get a bingo.

Some things I did this session:
-- Forced 13-14 year olds to read Lyn Hejinian (one girl was really into it and actually wrote this really cool "My Life" esque prose piece)
-- Went to Waffle House and wrote haikus
-- Convinced a girl she could write poems even though she always thought she could only write stories
-- Got kids to 'fill in the blanks' in Sappho fragments
-- Didn't eat any meat
-- Went for many drives in a 12 passenger van

I am really happy with how this session went. In about one week, there was marked improvement in over half of my class. They made fun of me. I offered to read a poem in class. I started by saying, "Okay this isn't the best" and they all yelled "NO DISCLAIMERS." Then I read and they offered me really insightful criticism and I thought, "hey. You guys are really good at this." They also said, "Kate when you don't like your poems you read them all low and sad like. You should read them like you mean it."

They are sage sage sage children.

(unfinished (perhaps permanently unfinished) Re Vision of that moving poem)

you take them back:

i.
the color of your lips,
your chest,
the topography
of our common sweat
the smell coiled around my neck
you hold your arms there.
Curved as a jaw bone--
pull me close to your body.
Boxes of photographs prop
the door, keep an eye open
unable to sleep in this space.
you beneath the window
the new bed we pushed that night.

on moving (a love poem!)

that night, we pushed the new bed
beneath the window.
you unable to sleep kept an eye
at the door, propped open
with boxes of photographs,
pull me close to your body,
curved as a jaw bone.

when you hold your arms there
coiled around my neck
they smell of our common sweat,
remind me of the topography
of your chest, the color of your lips.
when you take them back, I just roll away.