Original Poetry
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Quietus, Hiatus, and Other Us’s
Since returning from our trip home to Texas, I’ve been poleaxed with a deep lethargy, augmented in no small part by the weather. The warmer climes of the Lone Star State were a lovely but too-brief respite from the chill we’ve had since we returned to the farm. This morning it was in the teens and neither of us really warmed up all day, even with the heat pump running constantly (a pox on the house of whatever maladroit conceived of the idea of a “heat” pump….probably an ancestor of whoever designed the modern cars, washing machines, etc.). I’ll observe yet again that the difference between the cold months and…
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Like A Star
Like A Star I’m just a little Russian girl, too small to be seen, too still to be spied, too watchful to be calm. Plucked off the slush-choked streets of old Moscow and hurried to a warmer, slightly brighter place, I learned to trust the men, their patient hands, the regular food. I’m just now three years on this tortured orb, and I cannot speak the words of men, but I can moan and I can whimper and I can make my needs known. And the serious men have been so light with me, scent of cucumbers and tea and fish and vodka on their exhalations, kneeling before me to…
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Black Iron
Black Iron Mister Layton stood at the stove, staring At the sapphire circles of gas flame, Each tongue atop a yellow base, thinking. The heavy bowl of flour and cornmeal sat At his elbow, a miniature desert valley Full of grains and grooves and dunes, waiting To transform what he would offer. His old Arm trembled when he swung black iron Across and set it on the closest eye. He tipped the can of grease and spilled a ribbon Onto the slick obsidian of the skillet. Then he turned and took a mug from the Cupboard, then reached again in patient measured Rhythm, a priest at his altar with his…
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Comprehendest Thou This?
Comprehendest Thou This? Here, honey, I’ll let you out, I said, And twisted the knob and pushed the screen, and out Into the muggy twilight she went, tail Curved over her brindled back. Why Do you talk to it as if it understands You? he said, his face the same sneer As his entire stretch of decades of life Had been. I stabbed back with How do you know She doesn’t? Whatever bad smell he carried in his Nostrils seemed to worsen as he put His head to the side and hissed Every rational Person knows animals don’t comprehend Human speech. I met him with And where Did you learn…
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The Thirteenth of August
Today would have been her 103rd birthday, and her absence these nine years has left a divot on my life’s surface. I miss her, and I am glad she isn’t here to see what has become of her country and her region. Seeing such ugliness would have grieved her tough, hidden old heart. Her middle name was Viola, which she hated. I always loved it, thinking it had a Southern literary lilt to it, like Eudora or Flannary, and I would sometimes address her by it, which enraged her. “Viola,” I’d say, “Reckon what it would take to get you to make me some bacon for supper?” And she would…
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Like Malice
Like Malice I tugged a stone from my cell of soil, My personal earth, curved and grainy in the Bottom of its pock. I saw them — tumbling, They were. And I heard them — cursing, they were. And I was their god, and my glance Hardly touched their humped and hurrying backs As they set about –and without Hesitation– the rebuilding of The lanes and homes and secret sinks of kin And kind, sparing neither glare nor stare For me, the shaker of their roots, but Instead, ran and rang their tiny bells And called a convocation that could point Their group towards a fresh beginning in Tomorrow’s rays.…
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To An Emaciated Squirrel
To An Emaciated Squirrel I’ve never seen a skinny squirrel before But I can count your picket fence of ribs And pray that you find nourishment before Your young ones suffer in their leaf-lined cribs. ~ S.K. Orr
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Rest Home
Rest Home The air was cool in the shop when we Walked into it, through it, and it carried The heartbeat sounds in its own regular Atmosphere. We passed among narrow Aisles, and we stopped at last before One of them, arrested by how still Its pendulum hung. The others all moved And swept and tocked, but this one was silent And immobile, its face a testament To its own end. We adored It, knowing that it had grown still While all alone, away from all eyes That had ever noted it or Admired it or dismissed it. No one witnessed its final swing, its last Hand’s movement. And then…
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Unheeded By The Small Things
Unheeded By The Small Things The minute jewels gleam in the groove of the blade, climbed upon by tiny legs that neither displace nor diminish their shape nor beauty, and the rays pour down on the muted meadowscape, bringing heat and life, the ticking of an unseen clock driving the hours, hours unheeded by the small things, each of them precious in my sight, here on my site, in these days I have remaining, days in which I watch, bear witness, testify to ground-level majesty, days in which I catalog the singing joy of a life full of hours exchanged for these soft and secreted pleasures. These, my days. ~S.K.…
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Haiku For The World I See
Listing my pronouns? Never saw a wolf do this Guess he’ll go extinct. ~ S.K. Orr