Iron and Sulfur Poetry

The Painter

/ Katrina Kaye / 5 Comments

Katrina Kaye

He wanted to be a painter.

He wanted to paint himself at sixteen,
standing tall on mountain top,
a golden warrior for the helpless,
a beast of burden ready to sacrifice
for tomorrow’s promises.
That’s how he saw himself
when he closed clouding eyes.

Always careful to refuse limitations.

He was ambivalent to skin rubbed raw,
the formation of blisters on hardened heels,
and the weight strapped upon back leaving
marks against white freckled skin.

It took finely sliced transparencies
to etch out the idea that this perception
was self imposed.

Petrified on haunches, he watched
as the reverberation between the hum
drum of reality and the fleeting images of
fancy fabrication left him weak.

The last attempt he made at reclaiming his identity
came in a self portrait:

sprawling crow’s feet and age spots,
so close to his mother’s angry mood
he doesn’t recognize the expression on lips.

A child swallowed inside rib cage
who has been screaming for years.
A man who can’t recognize
lead poisoning seeping into tongue.

He still wants to paint a portrait of life,
a portrayal of desperation and disappointment,
capture howl in brush stroke and oil base,

display the hollow of gut
in strangled sketch and charcoal dust,
portray innocence, youth, freedom
in the colors on canvas.

But the paints have dried,
hardening bristles to stone.
He is merely a man,
too tired to rekindle the
spark long ago abandoned.

He once believed he
could be something magnificent.

“The Painter” is previously published in The Fall of a Sparrow (2014).

The Dead

/ Katrina Kaye

Katrina Kaye

There is
a hand
on my spine

pressing
backbone
under water.

I feel
the winkled
fingerprint

tattooed
into flesh.

It makes
me think
of the years

you pressed me
under your thumb.

All the times
I came
when you called,

eager at your door

only to receive
the scraps
you flung to
impassioned jaws.

Your fingers
never bruised me;

my teeth
never scraped
your hand.

I was held
at arm’s reach
secure

between palm
and fingers

left to
kick and curse,

powerless.

I have no idea
how to climb
back to the surface.

But I do
understand
how one might
arrive on dry land

only to curse
the sand in
the cracks
between toes.

My patience is
heavy and this
sickness shakes
me to the bone.

I am not the one
to recite a
memoir for the dead,

I am better
practiced
at letting go,

allowing the water
to pull me under
and dissolve.

“The Dead” is previously published in To Anyone Who Has Ever Loved a Writer (2014).

No Longer

/ Katrina Kaye

Katrina Kaye

I do not see ghosts anymore
but they are still here.

I watch them in the sparrows
I no longer have the inclination
to chase. I feel them in the music
I no longer have the patience
to memorize. I dance with them,

but no longer remember when first
I learned the steps; I listen to their
words, though I no longer speak
their native tongue. I hear them in the drip
of the faucet late at night, the creak
of the floorboards as I pass through.

I can still feel them within this home,
these walls, this air. They remain.
The one constant I know.

“No Longer” is previously published in Rabbits for Luck (2016).