Kristy Bowen -
Two Poems
Admonition
Our wants are inherited.
History is a handful
of rocks tossed against
the window, the wing
beat of summer, fingers
cool against your temples.
This tea is so sweet
it hurts your teeth,
singed muslin, velocity,
the bones of a small bird.
Your sister knots
and re-knots your hair,
her fingers precise and distant,
dreams about the open window,
a thousand bees gone
sterile in the hive.
This is what you are allowed:
cantilevered politeness,
blackened fruits
in a ceramic bowl,
this rope pulled tight
in your body,
an anarchy of tongues.
Your mother warns
against reading past
daylight, walking the thinly
lit roads outside town,
lockjaw and feral dogs.
Still, under a sheet,
your fingers find the honey,
the drones gone mad--
The bones, they hold the shape.
Past September
She thinks in threes:
the father, the spirit,
the unknown ghost.
Three steps to the window.
Three days until she bleeds.
Her tongue is fragile now,
slipping along words like butter,
a density of subtlety,
a geometry of bones.
When she speaks,
even the azaleas are anxious.
Morning becomes a wound,
jagged and dangerous.
She abandons her shoes
along the road to Wilmington,
drags her heels along
the thin tread of summer--
almost believes she belongs here--
this forgetting, this losing.
Absolution. Attrition.
She learns a way with recklessness,
tucks her hand in his pocket,
kisses him sweetly in the dark.
She learns what will burn,
what will take to flame,
like water to stones.
This is the point of entry,
of balance, diffusion,
the breathy signature.
She places her hand against
her stomach, dreams
of daughters named
after hurricanes.
Isabel. Lilly. Camille.
Soon they will ask her
where it hurts
Here.Here.Here.
___________________________________
Kristy Bowen’s work has appeared in a number of publications,
including Small Spiral Notebook, Stirring, and Poems Niederngasse.
She is the author of two chapbooks, Bloody Mary and The
Archaeologist’s Daughter, and a hypertext collection, Lattitudes. A
two-time Pushcart nominee, Bowen was recently awarded first place in
The Poetry Center of Chicago’s 10th Annual Juried Reading
Competition. A poet and text/collage artist, she has read, performed,
and exhibited her work at a number of bookstores, libraries,
galleries, bars/cafes, and festivals.
She lives in Chicago, where she edits the online journal Wicked
Alice, and is the founder of Dancing Girl Press, devoted to
publishing work by women poets. More of her work may be seen
