Poem: Sweet Letter

Sweet Letter
Hollins University, 2009

I am pulled from beneath the inside,
through the mouth, the lips, the eye.
Holding a black ballpoint pen that seeks a correlation between home and the
shouting, rushing of water through showerheads and sinks.

I am in a rocking chair listening to the fables of women,
where the grass breaks in places, a path like a cross,
with four unremarkable, swollen pieces. Stories I’ve picked up, noted, surrendered.

I am the womb, holding onto the hills and the mounds of the hips of the body
writing a story. But this is not home.
The crisp click-clacking of heels, stretch across chipped floorboards for hours and,
tumble down stairs that taste like whicker space.

The grain in the wood is worn, like the spine of a book creased and un-creased; like the lines on the side of your face when you smile.
Here, I see trees (I count eight large and three small). Here, I am not you, am not,
the city I left behind.

Nothing shouts or keeps or bends like the contours of your body,
of you on top of me. Our fingers interlaced like
wind and leaves—and your arm, secured around my waist.

The sun, the beginning, the delicate time, I belong
tracing outlines of somewheres we might go together.
Along your back, while you sleep;
hushed breath moving in a pattern that wrinkles the sheets.
How do I define my home to you?

I am reminded of it, in every step of eager ground,
soft dirt, bare legs resting on an argyle fence.
Across the field of open letters—home is an unlocked window, warm.
My bed is just an imprint of your body,
wishing wishing.

-Katche

Poem: Ode to friends at Christmas

I love you because you never tell me
that riding in an air balloon
is not a terrible idea,
even if it’s snowing and I may blow away
and never come home again.

When I whisper wishes under sheets,
where we giggle like we were young,
you stretch your ears to catch my words
before we drift off to sleep.

That when my pillow softens with the touch of a cool cheek
It is not of remorse or regret or due to a lack of feeling;
But because after another day spent with you
it just needs a rest.

I love you because when I am ridiculous
And arrogant and do not wish to call my mother
You make up wild tales of illness and confusion, answering the phone
speaking in tongues.
You buy me time to get it right,
as coins fall from my swollen pockets
until again I see that it is out of love
for me
that you are so contained.

And when we share the light that glints
from your spectacles,
an hour moves like seconds and
we are We,
mind readers with fists of joyous snow—
that we pass along like peppermint sticks to
complete strangers and that’s alright.

I love you because you skin your knees just as
I, skin
my elbows like
we are sharing a helmet for three bikes
and going, and going…

They say that winter kills our love, but I disagree
they say that studies show that us,
is not a unit; they cannot hold on to their pencils
to see our triumphs over
masses of land, over moats that trap our pasts
no, we hold hands.

I love you because you do not laugh,
when I have to leave. But you do not talk me into staying.
You pack a picnic basket full of thoughts and secrets
so I remember you on this long journey—
Yet how could I forget, you, ever?

You tip your hat and give a lingering hug,
and untie sandbags at my feet.
So when I fly I do so freely,
with snowflakes in my hair.

-Katche.

Poem-Laureate

Beneath an apple tree,
I used to wake up and watch you sleep a little longer
but now I catch you shaving, where you’ve caught your razor but don’t mind enough
to wipe away the mess you’ve made.

I am left pining for those voices in my head that would get me out of bed
and sing hello, good morning you’re alive,
you are alive.

I asked
where the oil beneath our fingertips emerged from, where it
coughed a name that was no name, it was a saint
who said:

we must fog between the lines of something that was decent
and the soft cushions on a couch, attached with ribbons
and a little tag, a note card attached
to a garbage bag left on my doorstep, filled with pallid clothing.

Sometimes you need distance to change
the pattern in which
words tumble from your lips onto the page.
Sometimes there is nothing to say,
and the tongue is burnt with wonder.

A prepubescent girl that saw through all our fears and said, you are right to go.
We named her Laureate.

The detail is in the eyelids, the outline is on the floor.

I am shivering bare, finally,
ready to be pushed upon and lifted to the road
that moves in a very specific direction,
on a great clear window-shaped pane
with a some sort of skylight.

And I’ve found that everything you said, once
lingers after your soft
silhouette to the bathroom, following your scent.

I wish you could care enough to open
that last letter I left
beneath the box springs where the perfect sky is still.

I can’t imagine what you must be like now,
absent from our maneuvers,
like holding hands to swallow what we could not say aloud.

And still, as poetry tiptoes in the wake of you,
it is as if I am years away,
beneath a tree, that was not a tree,
weeping over Laureate.