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Karen L. Lewis Bio: Karen Lewis is lead Teaching Artist for Just Buffalo Literacy Center. She teaches poetry and creative writing in schools throughout Western New York. Her “Picturing Poetry Proj ect” at Native American Magnet School, with CEPA Gallery Teaching Artist Amy Luraschi, was recently the subject of a documentary by film maker Jon Hand. Karen is a contributing editor for award winning Traffic East magazine. She is a fellow of The Banff Centre’s Wired Writing Studio. Karen’s poetry, short fiction, features, interviews and photography have been widely published. Her poem “Even if” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize by Slipstream Press in 2005. She and He She is a fracture filling up with shadows He is a fog filled meadow Here the sacred nestles a gray divide where white is black and black is morning and morning layers the light like tail feathers in a down draft She is a ghost, her mind filling up with sun He is transparent kindness, a smiling xanthic chimera If she can be described as joyous, sleeping silence then he must be, strictly speaking, comfortable noise, an aftereffect of something breaking She is the distance that slides from one vertebra to another He is a revolving spine of nights The space between them cannot be erased it is a consolation they have grown Coat of Arms I learned to speak the language of don’t touch me at my mother’s side My father used to joke his tongue a fuller’s teasel—raising bristle— that the thistle was my mother’s favorite flower Her Scottish skin spread pink poison of embarrassment I laid low in the weeds earth’s green urchin while they passed back and forth a martyr’s frame wrapped in brambles Some memories pierce through years my father taught me— harm a thistle wound yourself There is something humane about making obvious what is disagreeable to wear your power to defend or offend on your sleeve for all to see Field cactus stiff with cat’s claw and spider legs thistle combs the sky raking clouds holding safe the seeds of down that it delivers into the beaks of goldfinch their sweet songs flying over my mother’s coat of arms Even if After Adrienne Rich Even if the woman was raped 96 times instead of 97 and she was found years later laughing under a tree her body a defaced limb of history she would have the power of growth Even if my mother didn’t die and she was found walking without aids on a dirt road in Africa her shoulders chanting a soft chorus with sun Even if I had a cure for grief Even if my father could sleep through the night and his dreams were not cinema verite— he would put his money down for pornography Even if it were free Even if my mouth did not attract flies and I could not speak inhumane words : starvation, racism, fanaticism, relentless atrocities indifference we might discover pieces of hate under our fingernails Even if beauty didn’t have an ulterior motive and you could love me whoever you and I are it could be something temporary looking into each other eyes fixed and mutable Tunnel Mountain Banff, Alberta, 2007 Train whistles in French horn across the valley Between you and I flies an iridescent magpie Reaching for the Bow’s release bones of bedrock fortify mineral river lichen shivers percussive pebbles murmur flats and sharps whisper chenille and corduroy Shore lies drawing on its memories silent remnants reflection the surface of a tall peninsula ready to swallow this stone scribe whole Between these lines of earth scorching conduits fire cataclysm channel avalanche channel glacial crust scouring centuries of slide and grind that settle for the foot of elk, coyote, deer and goat The world is full of edges some jagged some round What is the difference between subservience and reverence? Gravity’s knees are scraped regardless crawling blind toward belief Better to be a lodestone of the sea listening to the shape of water and its promises to carry me in its currents Better to be ice threatening relief over flow Better to be dissolved slowly and pulled into dangling roots of Douglas Fir Mouthed earth devours scars reveal what time conceals When the time comes for me to rise like mountains I cannot hide myself in skin When the time comes clouds will drip into my mouth I will hold my hands like pockets life’s blood will pine away years recycling all kinds of green When the time comes for trembling aspen to bury themselves in sun I will pack my spine with resolve and the sheer veneer of days I will not be able to grasp how my self moves outward in all directions When the time comes for me to grow bolder to walk with a forest’s sense of altitude my eyes will turn to water dutifully cleansing for the sights that follow a small price to pay to breathe this air My dreams a series of prefix reveal I am always beginning |
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