Nancy Kennedy has an M.A. in Communication from Western Michigan University. Choeofpleirn Press has published her work in their Coneflower Poetry Journal, Best of Choeofpleirn, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, The Miserere Review, Thimble, and Gargoyle. She is a full-time writer and currently lives in Alabama.
The Poet
For countless nights
with dreams the color of rain,
I sashayed to the strains of Mozart
and pounded dust into bread.
For countless days I observed people carrying on like confused butterflies at Mardi Gras,
like bees going about their daily business with flowers choking on the pollen – all in need of consolation.
and I was heartstruck with compassion.
So with steady fingers I gathered words into a bucket
and rearranged them with strokes of ashes and oil.
I folded them into paper airplanes
and tossed them out to strangers—
strangers who would never look me in the eyes,
or see my head in my hand —
like an exhausted bird,
a diva drowning in her own song.
A grinder grinding stone –
with little compensation must rest at the end of day, fall into the easy chair.
So, with pleated skin and plaited hair, I
closed my fluttering lashes and slipped back into the night magnifico.
Surrender
Would the wisteria drape down the wall of my body and cling to my trellis of bones—
I would be beautiful and effervescent, an anomaly wearing grape scented pearls.
And if—
you should see the wisteria draping down the wall of my body and clinging to my trellis of bones,
leave me be.
I’ll be listening to the sound petals make as they fall to the ground.
Girl in a Blue Dress
From the back porch she looks
past the color of happiness
toward a certain shade of blue
past the tall spires of lombardy poplars
past clothes hanging on the line.
Devout white clouds become dinosaurs, tigers, and angels.
Simmering aloft they stoop to see Mary running in sandals to a swaying field of wheat higher than the gentle arch of her head
to the baby rabbits in the path of the combine
she scoops them into the skirt of her dress
and carries them back home–
only to be banished by the fussy keeper of the house.
Poor motherless things.
This was her destiny and more –
to see past the color of sadness.
On the Roof
Shut your eyes and I will show you
where the persimmon tree grows
where its fruit shimmers on the ground
crushed by the weight of the sun.
Then we will tiptoe through the bees that hover
to beyond the grove of white peaches and blushing apricots.
In the afternoon I will take you by the hand
and show you where the foxes live.
When night falls we will climb on the roof
and look at the lights of the faraway town.
And pine for the loss of the orchard.
The Fox
I am the fox,
earthbound
poised in the diluted sunlight of the paisley earth,
slipping past the old man
moving through the pines
over damp pieces of bark and soil
a thousand years old
—the smell of resin, bracing as a whiff of Old Spice
dreaming of being a good fox slinking to the chicken house.
The Galway Review 