Five Poems by Lynne Kemen

 

Childhood Is a Blur

 

No easy answers. A whirl of

sounds, smells, sights.

Try not to cry,

I’ll give you a story,

on one condition,

don’t be flippant; listen.

 

Children can be so cruelly

graceful, generous, and grabby.

Tracks across your heart,

Heartless, threadbare, muddied.

Grass stained.

 

Familiar songs children

have always sung,

Ring around the rosy farmer in the dell,

same for games–

circle games, King of the Hill.

Ragged memories,

rare glimpses in perfect focus.

 

 

Barn’s Burnt Down

 

Barn's burnt down, and now I can see the moon.

- Mizuta Masahide (17th-century Japanese poet and samurai)

 

Imagine you live your vision.

You jumped at a half-dreamt idea.

It now deals you.

 

Barn’s burnt down, 

owls can’t hide from the moon.

Birds burnt amongst all your things,

photos, paintings, books?

 

Not freeing as 

I thought it would be.

Firemen sift through the ashes.

That terrible lingering smell.

 

The cross on your forehead

from swiping fallen tears.

That horrible stink of loss.

 

 

Dog & Boy’s Delight

 

Metal hot afternoon,

Humdrum day.

Jazzy radio from far away.

Slubby rug, commercial grade.

Feet flung.

 

Railway nearby chugging

“I think I can. I think I can.”

Criminally hot. Constructive rest,

Boxer’s paroxysm of delight to be

with boy. Just hanging together on a

summer afternoon.

 

What could be better than to be

with my person?  We pups

sprawled in a pile. We’ve run

and played until it was too hot.

He tastes of salt and boy. Now

we just are.

 

 

A Found Poem

 

I found a poem in a book about biostatistics.

Not really in but tucked into the pages. Handwritten

words on blue-lined paper, delivered or mistakenly

left. Now, un-shelved, like the book.

 

This is to say/that I love you in so many ways/

That love is part of my central tendency/tender kisses

to your extremities/dispersion to the interquartile/

parts of my heart /You might inferentially assume/

adjusting or controlling for a variable-/except it is

invariable that love and passion/it o(beyes)rules/

I have a deep, statistical bias for your lips/

 

I left them to their torrid affair,

smoothed my chignon, adjusted my cardigan,

wiped my glasses and cleared my throat.

 

 

Icicles 

 

On a Sunday,

March 

icicles 

glinting,

sun 

spilling, 

drilling

into my

naked

 eyes.

 

Tree 

encircled 

in ice,

drips 

leaking light

Rivulets 

the wind

puts in

place. 

 

Icy stream 

stops,

half-frozen.

Last year’s leaves still scattered.

Lynne Kemen lives in Upstate New York. Her chapbook, More Than a Handful, was published in 2020.  She is published in Silver Birch Press, The Ravens Perch, Poetica Review, Stone Canoe, Spillwords, Topical Poetry, Fresh Words, The Ekphrastic Review, Lothlorien Poetry, and Blue Mountain Review. Lynne is the Interim President of Bright Hill Press. She is an Editor for the Blue Mountain Review and a lifetime member of The Southern Collective Experience. She has a new book, Shoes for Lucy, that will be published in early 2023 by SCE.