Feature Poet:
Kate Light

Kate Light’s books are The Laws of Falling Bodies, 1997 Roerich Prize co-winner from Story Line Press, and Open Slowly, Zoo Press, 2003. Her poetry has appeared in The Paris Review, Hudson Review, Dark Horse, Washington Post Book World, Feminist Studies, Barrow Street, Rattapallax, The Formalist, and The Penguin Book of the Sonnet.. Buy The Laws of Falling Bodies at http://www.storylinepress.com/showbook.asp?id=147. You can also buy Kate's latest book, Open Slowly at http://www.zoopress.org/light.html

WE ARE

separated by a nightside table; you sleep
ardently, submerged in a translucent dream,
and I clear my throat periodically, deep
fogs of throat-gunk clogging me like cream
clogs an artery. Doesn't this seem
typical, your sleep clear sleep, mine troubled, neap
and low tides of it; with thoughts that creep
like crabs up a beach, progressing until the beam
or splash of wave comes along to sweep
them back, crab-like thoughts that can't complete
a simple passage up the sunny beach...
I wish I could know what each
is inching toward, what path or street
a care fulfilled would lead my life to reach.
(You shift and mutter things, for thought and speech
are still like children playing hide-and-seek.)
Where now, my crustaceous thought-regime,
soldiers of the mind, bastions of advance-retreat-
advance? Still struggling with the moving sheen
of sun and sea: now one small room, now a dazzling gleam
of beach; now a sore throat to clear, secret-
ions of a weakened body-mind--and you, sweet
lambent sleeper, if you're some kind of promise-keep-
er, sing out to me, release, redeem.

PHANTOM

At the edge of consciousness it floats;
shimmering, phantom-pale and whole;
sentences, sometimes of words sometimes of notes--
lost ghost of youth or truth's jewelled ghoul--
visible from this distance that increases with each
moment of becoming increasingly awake.
We all have these inside, just outside of reach.
How I envy those who dream only for dreaming's sake;
or those whose lives are dream enough--
a little nightmare mixes into every breath I take;
and inventory takes me as I wake; not Love
will greet me with a smile, not help me bear
the burden of this, phantom more & more not there

IF HE SEES HER

If he sees her, love will flare
briefly; a struck match, held
in his fingers, that he will let
burn till the threshold of flesh is threat-
ened. It will burn, and he will stare--

the meeting of the sulphur and the air--
and the dark will be dispelled
briefly. Briefly he will forget
his anger, briefly light be
led into his darksomewhere

soul or self or heart or cleft or bare
closet. But say he burns and he will deny it;
say he loves and he will mortify it.

I CONCLUDE A SONNET NEVER CHANGED

I conclude a sonnet never changed
a mind, or moved a heart, or opened a locked
door. If such could be so readily arranged,
poems could not possibly stay stocked.
Pockets would be filled and pillows swarmed.
Oh no, a sonnet never swung a gate,
cracked a safe, or left a bomb disarmed.
It never swam a moat, or pried a crate.
Or rather, whom it moved, at any rate,
was accidental; a side effect, some poor
someone tugged at when its influence, its weight,
its pool of moonlight revealed a midnight shore.
Yes, then, it may have changed a life, or more;
but not the one it was intended for.

MAYBE HIDDEN

is my favorite space. Maybe finding
treasure buried underneath a mound
of brow, or cowering behind a binding
fear; tracing over and over the same ground
until some artifice gives way...Perhaps I'd rather
bring somebody out than be myself brought
out. That bit of him that I can gather
while the rest runs wild--I never doubt
its verity or value; but if one who's not
so reticent throws a rope my way, do I reach out?
Or retreat into some quiet place
where I can dream without intrusion
about my love, and how he loves seclusion...

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