PoetryMagazine.com
Since 1996 Volume XXI KB Ballentine KB Ballentine has a M.A. in Writing and a M.F.A. in Creative Writing, Poetry. Her fifth collection of poems, Almost Everything, Almost Nothing, is forthcoming by Middle Creek Publishing. Her fourth collection, The Perfume of Leaving, was awarded the 2016 Blue Light Press Book Award. Blue, Ragged Wind —for a student Sky stunned by the news — you will not be back. I stare into the blue, atoms dissolving, taking away the shape of you. Absorbed into Bryant’s earthly coach, into Donne’s wakeful eternity, you have traveled a distance we cannot reach. Robbed from us the young man we knew. No noon sun can warm us from this cold rumor. No night more chilling than today’s dawn, when a dragonfly darted over the lake, the sky, in lonely flight, light broken and scattered behind.
Darkness to Hold Listen to the stars breathing in the night. Curse the dawn that steals your dreams while rose and lavender unstitch horizon’s seam and bluebirds bunch the feeder, one red–bellied woodpecker tapping you awake. You stumble into this world, this life, this day. Trade vivid visions for monochrome moments — bliss orphaned, forgetfulness splintered. The unblinking sun yawns. Work calls you into eight by eight cubes: time measured in ticks of two blades dragging across a face, your skin, your thoughts. Listen, listen to the stars, breathing on the other side of the sky, waiting with your dreams. Nightingale and lark singing, shadows knitting the dark.
Field Stone Grief Memory swarms — promises sown, flown like thistle, like flies. Scattered to who knows where. Days patterned like gray tile, like slate hanging heavy from the sky, my heart. Not even a breath flows through the fissures, splinters shorn and sharp. Crows hover, shadow the yard. They watch me watching and do not blink. Copyright, 2018, KB Ballentine. All Rights Reserved. PoetryMagazine.com is published by Gilford Multimedia LLC www.nycny.net |
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