Five poems by Kathleen Atkins

warm salad

There is nothing I enjoy more
Than a warm spinach salad
With crisp green apples
And a crumbling of goat cheese

Of course
I lie

But at the moment
It’s all the truth I need

view

You know those windows seen from bed while your lover sleeps,
Where the security bars split and subdivide
The yellowed light with shadows, like a heat pipe sigh?

I wonder, is it right to remember them all, one by one,
Or is it simply polite to say you've forgotten them all, together

Quarantined

“It means we might not get out alive.”

“Wanna fuck?”

“Nah. Don’t think so.”

“Did you ever wonder what it would be like if your blood was made of lightning?”

“Do you think it would make you want to fuck?”

“Nah, don’t think so.”

“Yeah.”

deluge

I am in a persistent state of water.
Swimming Of The Brain
They call it.

He asked me,
Well, what do They mean?

And I explained.

Last night in a dream
Madonna said to me,
‘I know the secrets of the seven lobes.’
‘Where do you shop?’
I asked her.
‘Underwater,’ she replied.

I went to work waterlogged -
Drowning in morning.

in the bag

It’s a woven bag,
Maybe macramé.
One inch holes -
This bag I’m sitting in.

Breezes pass thru the gaps,
Around the twisted strings
To reach my skin
Thru this string sieve
Holding all my flesh in.

One hole surrounds my eye socket,
Formed perfectly along the curve
Of that oblong facial plane.
I can blink -
My eyelashes peek out.
I can wink -
A coy motion in this state of compression,
Knees drawn to my chin.
Everything is packed,
Not uncomfortably, in.

I can flex,
My muscles aimlessly taught,
Then slack.
My ass hangs above a table in a Brand Name Tex Mex Bar
Where the marguerites are topped with water,
and anxious faces file in.

I can swing in the corner of a dark-wood office,
Right by the window,
the sun shines in.
A lady in a wrinkled skirt and crooked glasses dumps water on my head.
I lick the drops from my nose and chin,
Satisfied
as my macramé bag goes into a spin.

Kathleen Atkins graduated from Bucknell University with degrees in English and Art History. She now works in medical publishing in University City and lives in Bella Vista. Her work has appeared in The Philadelphia Independent.