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Local Honey

/ Katrina Kaye / 2 Comments

Katrina Kaye

She is selling local honey
out of the back of an 84 Dodge.
In tight worn jeans
and a crochet halter,
she wipes a sticky finger across her thigh.

I know her.
She drinks straight
from the comb.
She lets sugar sit on white teeth
savoring the rot.

She mesmerizes passer bys,
with a saccharine smile
and taut abdomen.
Trying to make an honest living
to accommodate an immoral code.

Honey,
I know you better.
I know what that caramel hair
looks like when it is unwashed
and stiff from too much sugar.
I know the sick syrup residue
the leaks down
the back of your throat.
The taste you can’t quite shake.

This remedy, homegrown and handmade,
healed burns and soothed wounds.
We candied it with
our own hands and tested it with
our own lips swelling
our immunity to foreign bodies.
We didn’t need anything more,
just this sweetness which stuck us together.

The flavor, the thick,
still reminds me of you.

She accidentally smiles at me,
lifts her hand to wave,
before catching herself,
looking away,
and returning to the hive.

to the tuesday night regular with the kind smile:

/ Katrina Kaye / Leave a comment

Katrina Kaye

run away with me.

make a bedroom
of this september sky
with all its grey leaking
about asphalt and chain link.

let us take a mile of highway,
cracked under the remnants of summer,
call it ours.
i will make a flag
from a torn dress
still wet from desert storms.
wave to hell with
the past,
the present,
to all those pretty bar boys,
with their chiseled faces
and lazy smiles.

i have mountain tops peaked with dreams,
a ridge cresting the Sandias big enough for two.
we don’t need anything else.

turn toward the sun with me.

if you let me kiss your shoulder blade,
i will forever
buy you black t-shirts and serve
you coffee in bed.

you’ll slice fresh green limes
and i will engrave poetry
into the crease of your knuckles.

we will get a horse,
a tall, yellow bay,
and outrun the moon.

the dark will never catch us.

i could make you a home
if you let me learn how.
if you will help me hold up
the planks and hand me the nails
so i no longer need to clench them in my teeth.

i am searching for a spill
of sunlight upon mattress to wake up beside.
a path that will unravel silver
i can twist around ankles.
a sailboat waiting at the coast of our earth.

let us find a day
in the middle of the desert
so bright,
the sun can only be felt,
not seen.

from where we stand
we can watch as it beats upon
the open road,
using our bodies to
break into shadow.

“to the tuesday night regular with the kind smile” is previously published in September (2014).

Dryad

/ Katrina Kaye

Katrina Kaye

Trying to escape
the heat of June,
he sits watching
the moon when
he sees her.

She walks,
feet bare in tall grass,
body illuminated in midnight.

He approaches.
Yellow wildflowers
hide his gaze.

Her neck is exposed by
the breeze as young summer
plays in loose black hair.

He watches the air
move through her mouth,
into her throat and chest.

He holds his breath
as she expels her own.

He leans forward.
Her head turns sharply,
a wild animal catching
the scent of hunters
on the wind.

He freezes.
She stares.

A soft smile plays
at the corner of her lips.
He can’t speak, but feels a
tingle going up his spine.

He smiles and laughs.

She holds his gaze,
for one, two, three seconds.
Then, like the midnight moon,
she vanishes.

“Dryad” is previously published in Hazy Expressions (2006) and A Scattering of Imperfections (2009).