White After Memorial Day


It’s only May 10th, yet I’ve shimmied
into optic white jeans, rejoicing
they fit from last summer; white
doesn’t forgive. Boiling
for broth on the stove: the chaff 
of last night’s chicken
thyme rubbed into its olive-oiled skin
for my dinner party
where a true Belle told me, In the South, you go
by temperature not date.
In Michigan this wouldn’t happen
and even here, I don’t wear white shoes
until June first. I just won’t. 
A Charleston gentleman, 82, with young man’s glasses
asked me to coffee. He heard of my divorce. 
I refused, politely. His wife died three years ago.
Twin Cadillacs, circa 1980, sit in his carport
side by side, limo-long and white.

From Untying the Knot (Aldrich Press, 2014) by Karen Paul Holmes
​


Singing with Beethoven


Leaving Brasstown 
my car moves past twilight, 
dusk enough
to sense fields with dark cattle shapes,
a black-mountain backdrop.
I turn on the radio, crack windows— 
Music, nature mingle in cool air,
cricket song merges with “Ode to Joy.”

Now, night enough
that my headlights end in nothingness,
I have to trust
where the curving road goes. 
For a moment
I fixate on the void,

a blue shiver travels my spine.

Then Beethoven heartens me,
Seek beyond the starry canopy! 
I hit the pedal and drive on home,
belting it out like a fat soprano.

first published in Dead Mule School of Southern Literature