Poetry » Kim Shuck »

May or may not have
Something to do with goats
Competition with
Greeks or

Actor’s masks but
Certainly something about the
Stage the
Word keeps sticking in my
Eyelashes and on my fingers and
People line up to gather what they think they
Own of the grief and I pick at the
Newly dry skin under my right
Eye and people look to see if I’m
Doing this well and I’m
Not the shape of
Change keeps distracting me the
Idea of how two abbreviated cells can
Become someone how the
Empty space of that someone
Makes patterns that twist too that
Move out so quickly I can’t get
High enough to see the pattern and I
Look up to find
Supper and car rides to
Empty places and
Concern which I can
Also not fill

Nouns won’t carry their own
Water keep
Laying siege to the fridge and they
Never rinse their dishes unused
Phones keep ringing and I
Can’t turn the computer alarms off everywhere this
False urgency things won’t
Stay where I put them keep
Slithering off or being
Carried by the tides and currents of the
House where did all of this
Laundry come from

Bottle rockets or
Driving in darkness to the cliffs not
Even a solid summer storm to clear my
Heart this is wind in the afternoon and
Shallow folded naps and the ache in my
Left palm these polished and chipped
Stones aren’t
Saying anything even the
Thyme in the chicken is
Silent we’ve run out of
Candles all I can hear is the
Hive in the neighbor’s yard this month is a
Tiling exercise and a
Simple one at that but I’m
Windworn can’t lay the
Dust just want to curl here and
Catch some more sleep

Familiar I swear one of us has to
Change the
Clothes forgotten on the line in the
Dark with the fog and wind and
What schedule there is
Ringing through me how is it the
Notion of a person shatters into
So many pieces that they are
Absolutely everywhere so
Overwhelmingly unavoidable and we
Talk about them as
Gone or
Passed as if they weren’t in each
Surface ever touched and every
Action silly or greedy or
Beautiful weren’t as arresting as the
Tea kettle or any other
Demonstrated noun and aren’t we
Having enough trouble managing those
Without all of these endless
Breath stealing
Curtain calls

Symbolic
Humans are like that understandable if small
Remembered scraps are
Squared off
Folded into something that will
Mark a page in a book or take
Space on a shelf it’s all about
Place isn’t it
Timing
Jam in a range of warm
Tones lined up
Jars on shelves the
Folded newspaper under them those
Dates on
Labels on
Pages and this week
Everything is time travel the
Symbols I choose to
Share the moments I
Keep for myself some of them
Folded quite small and
Tucked into places where I hope I won’t
Find them again