December 2023
Bio Note: A significantly hearing impaired writer and artist adopted with my twin sister in Luxembourg, I am the author of two memoirs in verse (Kelsay Books, 2022 and 2024) and a short form poetry collection (Red Moon Press, 2023). Other works have appeared in more than eighty literary journals, most recently including Rattle, Chestnut Review, and Broad River Review. I serve as the creative nonfiction editor of The Bookends Review and on the Editorial Board of Beyond Words. My cedar-shingled home is in picturesque Vermont, where my backyard woods ground me in shadow and light.
Before My Homeland Had A Name
it simply was. Boulders and grime and spent seeds in the streams breathed with unforgiving moss, spread in silence without protest. And when copper-brushed rains hushed thrushes into place, I think I was born. A name with cragged consonants too many, uncushioned by forgiving vowels, you, nonetheless, cradled it gently in your mouth while you whispered your gracious years into my ear until the hour you could no longer breathe, and it caught, excruciatingly, in your throat. In a desperate, deafening rasp, you expelled me from you, leaving me with myself and a name now foreign and only my own. I perch on cliffs that hover precariously above mercy from whence my ancestors crawled to be flooded by copper-brushed rains.
First published in Kitchen Table Quarterly.
Traveling in Place
Backs to a cut-glass wall, distorted reflections of what lies ahead bevel possibilities aglow. Should we turn, mirrored stances shaded from glare reveal what is left behind. Mired in tunneled indecision, we float in aqua-infused denial, and share stories about waiting for a bus in a subway station.
First published in Visual Verse.
©2023 Kelly Sargent
Editor's Note: If this poem(s) moves you please consider writing to the author (email address above) to say what it is about the poem you like. Writing to the author is what builds the community at Verse Virtual. It is very important. -JL