DREAMS SWELL LASHED / image by Amalie Flynn

people boats

dreams swell/ lashed to circumstance in Syria/ in Gambia/ launched from Libya in leaky rubber chugs to birdless deep/ chugs w/ floor of feet w/ canopy of arms like 700 starfish sweating/ surfing demons/ keeling keening groaning spinning ferment/ tossed estrange/ the black moon sinking into raucous mucus maelstroms/ cataract of violet distress/ the turbulence of orange sun/ bursting over flotsom/ boats adrift/ boats repelled/ prison haulers fatal w/o water, w/o air fatal in shrieking rescue/ panicked sea/ 10 hours tossed to grief/ where vomit waters sweep the beaches gnawed by ruptured rubber masses/ huddled under searchlights/ infant wish:: democracy

pretending there is garden in the spring, paradise in time

this silk and golden weft that weaves
its vines through field and forest
this intricate design atop a kingdom
of the dying, above the restless thread
of streets, the rot beneath:: Deep
the sleep of mouse and wren, the carcasses
of crickets. The desiccated corpses
of the moths. Beneath the flowers all
dyed dismal, dog and possum disemboweled,
little deer with tongue stuck out, the rat
beheaded, like video of hostage

Kathleen Hellen

Kathleen Hellen’s collections include Meet Me at the Bottom, The Only Country Was the Color of My Skin, and Umberto’s Night, which won the poetry prize from Washington Writers’ Publishing House, and two chapbooks, The Girl Who Loved Mothra and Pentimento. Featured on Poetry Daily and Verse Daily, her work has appeared widely in such journals as Another Chicago Magazine, Arts & Letters, The Carolina Quarterly, Cimarron Review, Colorado Review, jubilat, The Massachusetts Review, New Letters, North American Review, Prairie Schooner, Puerto del Sol, Salamander, The Sewanee Review, Sixth Finch, Southern Humanities Review, Subtropics, The Sycamore Review, Waxwing, West Branch, and Witness, among others. Hellen’s awards include the Thomas Merton prize for Poetry of the Sacred, The James Still Award, and prizes from the H.O.W. Journal and Washington Square Review.