Kristen Henderson

“Who is so fancy, esoterica saves the day?Who is the Yogi, Namaste?”

“He utilizesform for a striking lecture;young poets shiverinexperience,but thaw over their own work,fertilize magic.”

“Once, I took the penny whistle you gave me and discovered a spotby the roaring falls where I could play as loud as I wanted. I lay in the bifurcated trunkof a low-slung birch tree. The sun peeked through applauding leaves, high overhead.”

“You think it’s a game?Unintelligible? Ha!Envision no spoons.This is serious.It is a matter of joyversus emptiness.”

“I dream for an absentee and oft maligned device—the accident-maker, the soul-taker, my camera; its factory guaranteedthird eye, without which I am duly dimand memory denied. No picturesfor my contrived Arbus to declare, excepting some stitch of Sextonmanages these sentences of despair.”

“...we’re not even really hiking,more like meandering in cinematic light.”

“...you hold a poemthat functions half as personalnote and half as telescopeto the heightsawaiting us all.”

“There’s a pressure at all hours of the day only a poem can assuage.”

“And the sculptors will shape the soil for the writers to stretch the seedsfor the patient painters who sketch the petals they will shade in alabaster and gold. Their sweat is the rain. Maybe the jazzman will send us a rose.”

“Sure, I watched the workmen come and lower large pieces of rotten sheetrock and lift new clean panels on a pulleyfrom that same window months ago, and I could have written then, but I must have sensed her coming, the smoker, so I waited.”

“As a woman still,without the right kind of mouth,my tongue’s of no use.”

“If you knew you were going to lose your memorybut you could choose five things you’d never forget, what would they be—a certain face, a taste, a scent,a touch; how deepin this, the middle of your life?”

“He may take long walksin the raining darkalmost aimlesslyto a spot of soaked grassin a neighbor’s open field.He’s decided this is the placefor you and him to meet again.”

“what if there was an uncanny moment when all the birds were grounded from Cape Town to Juneau, and everywhere between--all feathers frozen in a universal stutter, so quick as to make a snail of light, and even Stephen Hawking's mind would miss it?”

“Up past the old lime kiln built into the side of a hill we take a hard right at a clearing lined by brittle apple trees still willing to bear fruit.I snap sticks beneath my feetand steal pictures of the view while you reach for something sweet, as much as it bowsto you.”

“Time’s relativity is considered and abandoned, for the more revelatory experiences of starlightin strands, and pearly floors that span as far as absolute compassion...”

“Would it be enough to rock on a stormless sea with each our separate memories tuned to the state of the sinking sun?”

“If in poetry court she was calledto testify on matters whereI was condemned to imprisonment: parking my egoat a broken meter, line violations, forced rhyme,dealing stanzaics to children, shootingoff my mouth, getting cute, for even thislatest attempt at verse, she would tell the whole truth,she would admit from the pitof her unsung brilliance,from all of the paintings and poemsshe herself has been makingand storing in the vast empire of her singing soul, your Honor, my daughter is guiltyof plagiarizing my cells.”

“I tell you once and for all—in front of the angel pictures on the wall, that I am not a host to load-bearing ghosts or headyentities, and if I was ever holy, I have fallen farinto the dense atmosphere of the living.”

“I wonder what became of you, your JohnnyRotten skin, no Emerald City eyes.You'd have been a beauty if you let inferiority steam your glasses with its candor, sans laughter.”