Katrina Kaye

is not merely a flash of color.
You can caress it,

cradle it,

wrap it around your fist
like the links of a chain.
It pinches the skin,
cuts to the pink.

I am not one to chew lips
or graze nail tips, but
on nights like this

desperation

crawls beneath surface,

lurks inside rough veins roped around arm,
treads under the soft tissue of neck,
I can see it pulse.

The salt of it cannot be denied:
the stink cannot go ignored.
I have been playing fill in the blanks
with crossed eyes only
to come to the conclusion
that all of this,

ALL OF THIS

is for nothing.

Can’t you see that?

The hiss of heartbeat
is not generous enough
and with every scratch
the healing takes a little longer.
If the skin is already dead,
then the venom will recede.
Not even a scar remains.

The cut was never that deep.

I tended my own wounds
before anyone ever had
a chance to see them.

 

“Desperation” is previously published in Saturday’s Sirens (2021).

Katrina Kaye

after Wallace Stevens

I

Iron gates surround blue doored apartment.
All that moves are the seasons
passing by curtained window shielding a ghost within.

II

I am of solemn mind,
Like a house
built by hands which resemble his.

III

He sweeps me in a whirlwind of autumn leaves
and spends the fall in a pantomime of eternal love.

IV

A man and a woman
can stay warm on a November night.
A man and a woman and another woman
are the heat running out on a December morning.

V

I do not know which to prefer,
the sweet lies of a memory
or the blue eyes of the bartender,
the bed heated by his hunger
or the emptiness just after.

VI

Icicles hang abandoned
dripping in the April sun.
The shadow of a man I knew
crosses it, to and fro.
The glare
redeemed by the shades
prepares me for a new spring.

VII

The thin man of summer
prefers golden birds to shy sparrows.
But that doesn’t stop him
from a momentary blindness
by my chestnut feathers.

VIII

I have always been a sucker for accents
and long fingers plucking strings;
I know, too,
that difference of enchantment and truth
sometimes I just don’t care.

IX

When the third blue eyed boy flew out of sight,
I still had not found the imprint of you.
I stop retracing the same circles.

X

In solitary contentment,
I release myself
reflecting on lovers and expectations.
The idea of romance unravels.

XI

You rode over the state line
for a weekend visit,
but a fear pierced you,
and you fell asleep in hotel room
leaving me waiting at window table
watching birds perch on telephone wires.

XII

My mouth cannot hold on to bitterness,
but it does not retain the flavor of hope either.

XIII

Afternoon crept into evening,
and I lounge in the house
I made alone.
I no longer look for home
in the cracked shells of the past.

Katrina Kaye

I know I will feel alive again
once my blood is new baptized.

You see,
I forget,               at times,
during the merriment of
intoxication, that alcohol,
at its heart,

is a depressant,

and that I,
at my heart,                  am prone
to broken glass and bruised lips,
lonely basements and stray cats.

I am nothing more than another
painted face and missing tooth.

But by now I know this swing of mood is
merely the remnants of alcohol in veins; it is not personal.
It is a cross I drag between curse and revival.

You would think I would have known better
after all this time.

“I am waiting for the alcohol to leave my system.” is previously published in Madness Muse Press (2020).