Karen Kevorkian
(USA)
A Compelling Velvety Voice
Dust fine as talc unfragranced and pale, a road
eerily untrafficked though now and then
disordered by cars, overhead the cold pearl of the moon
and thudding film memory
where a biplane’s cutting-off engine struggled through
smoke of dawn, dying in bare daylight
if not directly over the roof under which people slept
then close enough my darling
is it too late
up and down the road doors slamming
the small plane disturbing crows’ sleek unseen bodies,
sheen of feathers uprising
Karen Kevorkian
Denver Quarterly
The Mouth with the Gold Teeth Speaks
The leaves here are gold
and the mornings so quiet
the heart thud
a startling sound
yet I do not think much
of my body
Patrociño Barela’s carvings
prized not by his wife
who burned his night’s work
for morning fuel
his dwarfsized La Muerte
sitting in a cart too big
to burn featureless
as a fetus that paradox
to be born is to die
heavy lidded the daubed saints
skinny Christs with those eyes
deep lines around the mouth
suggesting the sensual
of no use when nailed
to a cross except you
suffer majestically
in a chapel made of mud
where each year parishioners
refresh walls with more mud
the comforting surface
inviting to the hand
lively with bits of straw
the little church
in a fortress-like space
facing mountains the crosses
of derelict moradas
the phrase cactus spine braided
making space in the mind
with the practical small
basins in storerooms
to wash away blood
throw yourself against a body
to be forgiven if not
in the sense God forgives you my child
but physically shriven
as though the word
meant peeled
lain on the Earth’s body
cushioned and weeping
adorned by the buzz
and lashes of remorse
like all the tattoos
acquired at the time
you believed your body
would always be firm
in the high desert Buddhists
speak of the murderous
Myanmar Buddhists whose
inhospitable treatment
of Muslims is grievous
the need to pick over many
contradictions
little bows
to each person speaking
an inky blue sky over boxlike
arid earth buildings
big rigs rolling down
the paseo also 4x4s, bikes,
and those queuing for the free
plaza concert
with their children and dogs
arms and throats
arabesqued and limned
not just technique,
this constant messing with
the specific, physical detail
gold trees are live coals,
overhead it is rapture,
you will be saved
any minute now
gain fluency in tongues
become supple and feel a rush
in the body absent
these many years
Karen Kevorkian
Antioch Review
Our Lady of Sorrows or Is It Solitude
Each day contrives a new architecture of pillows,
letters smoothed flat, bent photos, notes on yellow paper
whole years forgotten, not necessarily important ones
smudge by the door, blue clad figure hovering,
from the corner nattering, a child that mumbles
out of adult hearing, the voice always fictitious
hissy sibilants, trees shushing, stubby pile of the almost
velvet chair that looked smooth, prickles
8:30 p.m., too little light, cat leads the way, disappears
in gloom just above the floor
sensation of movement is what a ghost is, worn sheets
and all the feet shoved to the end of them
Karen Kevorkian
Coiled Serpent: Poets Arising from the Cultural Quakes & Shifts in Los Angeles, Tia Chucha Press
____________________________________________
Karen Kevorkian -BIO
Karen Kevorkian has published two poetry collections, Lizard Dream and White Stucco Black Wing. A native of Texas, she presently lives in Los Angeles where she teaches poetry writing at University of California Los Angeles. Her poetry and fiction appear in many journals, recently in Antioch Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Denver Quarterly Review, Witness, Pool, Spillway, Poetry International, and Volt. She’s received a number of residency fellowships to artist foundations, most recently at the Wurlitzer Foundation in Taos, New Mexico. She is fiction editor of Able Muse journal.