Two Poems by Ken Holland

 

Favela 

 

You handed me your glasses and asked

that I look inside your head.

 

So I did.

 

I peered in closely, as though reading

the small font of footnotes.

 

And my god, the squalor.

 

The topography of your thoughts

was a tent city of poverty thick as paste.

You were everywhere within, and held out

your many hands to guide me over

viscous runnels of jellied-water.

Weak planks of wood held our weight

as we crossed amid a scent

that flowed with the flush of an abattoir.

Your hundredfold fingers caressed my face

and reshaped it as your own.

I was bitten by the malaria of your mind,

its fever hugging me with a heat

that raw enwrapped my neck.

I collapsed onto one knee and felt the sludge

slick about my shin. A gray vapor melted

over my eyes. I pulled your name

from the trench of my strangled throat

and flung it into the fetid air.

 

What? you asked, hearing my voice.

What did you see?

 

I handed back your glasses. Ran my hand

through the waves of my hair.

 

Don’t be foolish, I replied,

I never opened my eyes.

And the First Line Is 

 

I opened the door.

            What a hideous first line for a poem.

            “I opened the door.”

            “I opened the door.”

How about this:

            I put my fist through the wall.

            I punched my fist straight through the wall.

            And there my hand closed on something unseen.

            And I pulled it back through the wall and flung it to the floor.

            It may have been breathing. It may have been feigning death.

            It may have been anything at all.

            Whatever it was, it was lying on the floor of my room

            Like a thought barely formed

            Like the intake of breath before a scream

            This thing I’d pulled away from where it had been

            And to show it where now it had come to lie

            I swept my hand through the air, to accentuate

            The four corners of despair, and whispered to this thing

            As if a thing that could hear: Welcome to my world

            And said it twice more just to be clear.

Ken Holland has had work widely published in such journals as Rattle, Atlanta Review, and Pedestal Magazine. He was awarded first place in several competitions including New Ohio Review, Kim Addonizio judge. His chapbook, “Rust and Slag”, was a finalist in the 2024 Concrete Wolf competition as well as the 2025 Moonstone Press competition which Moonstone subsequently published. His poem, “Sepia Life” was a finalist in Bicoastal Review’s 2025 contest. He’s been nominated three times for the Pushcart Prize and lives in the mid-Hudson Valley of New York. More by visiting: kenhollandpoet.com