June 2022
Bio Note: I’m a life-long resident of Kentucky. After 25 years as a computer programmer analyst, I retired to write full-time. I enjoy photography and visiting museums, cemeteries, historic towns, forests, gardens, and bodies of water. My third poetry collection from Dos Madres Press, Where Wind Tastes Like Pears, was released in 2021, and my poems are forthcoming in Slippery Elm as winner of their 2022 poetry contest, and Valparaiso Poetry Review.
Bargaining with God
Dad, I picture you at church, eyes on the tall candle
you lit, one flame in a sea of swaying, praying below
St. Anne, hand on her heart, with her daughter Mary,
gowns in translucent folds at their feet, eyes lowered to you,
or bedside, down on your knees at night, you plead
for your sister Alvera, fists folded tight, you cry
into soft sheets. I don’t know how young
I was when you first told the story,
how you begged God to spare her, asked Him to transfer
her cancer into you, but a question rose in my mind,
How could you want to die, leave me?
I never asked, tried not to consider what if
God granted your wish, tried not to wonder
how love of a sister measured
against love of a daughter.
Dream Exchange
Against a sugar maple you flatten your ear the bones go warm white glow of yesterdays: voices, senses held in cracks furred songs of what it saw shouldered
~ Found poem composed/modified from words in Ada Limón's poem, "How Far Away We Are"
Golden Pupils
Burning with belief we poke wounds in a field under wet silt bury native seeds wings of mystery with singular intentions, histories to reveal. We abandon all nooses devour beauty mouth our wild wishes to the cardinal points.
~ Found poem composed/modified from words in Ada Limón's poem, "Rewilding"
©2022 Karen George
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