Kim Dower
(USA)
Dying Languages
One language is lost
every two weeks. Researchers travel the world
to interview the last speakers.
Quiet, you can hear what they say:
“She left the parrot in the car,”
“Cut off his leg to make it stop trembling,”
“Keep me safe from myself.”
What kinds of languages get lost?
Not ones we speak in Los Angeles
New York or Miami.
A language from a place so hot and humid
words can no longer form in people’s mouths.
A language so cruel that people have to cover their ears
so as to not be contaminated.
A language so silly each time a phrase is uttered
people in the streets die laughing.
Now and again men, women, children, goats
faint after overhearing the stupidest thought.
One language will never be lost:
the language of poets struggling to understand
why we die with one word on our lips.
from Air Kissing on Mars
Published by Red Hen Press 2013
I wore this dress today for you, mom,
breezy floral, dancing with color
soft, silky, flows as I walk.
Easter Sunday and you always liked
to get dressed, go for brunch, “maybe
there’s a good movie playing somewhere?”
Wrong religion, we were not church-goers,
but New Yorkers who understood the value
of a parade down 5th Avenue, bonnets
in lavender, powder blues, pinks, hues
of spring, the hope it would bring.
We had no religion but we did have
noodle kugel, grandparents, dads
who could fix fans, reach the china
on the top shelf, carve the turkey.
That time has passed. You were the last
to go, mom, and I still feel bad I never
got dressed up for you like you wanted me to.
I had things, things to do. But today in L.A.
hot the way you liked it — those little birds
you loved to see flitting from tree to tree —
just saw one, a twig in it’s mouth, preparing
a bed for its baby — might still be an egg,
I wish you were here. I’ve got a closet filled
with dresses I need to show you.
from Last Train to the Missing Planet
published by Red Hen Press, 2016
Puzzle
She solves puzzles all day
thirteen across: four letter word
for dying; one down:
phrase for love without limits
she wracks her brain
squeezes her eyes tight
she can taste the right word, ripe
ready to drop into her consciousness
under the table a bedazzled
dog rests his head on her naked toes
she’d wear slippers if she could find
the right pair – comfortable, not too soft
Ah! eleven across: “diced dish”
this has got to be “hash,” she thinks
but it’s one letter short:
the final insult
to another unsolved day
Sunbathing on Tyrone Power’s Grave
Red Hen Press, Spring, 2019
____________________________________________
BIO
Kim (Freilich) Dower, originally from New York City, received a BFA in Creative Writing from Emerson College, where she also taught creative writing. She has published three collections of poetry, all from Red Hen Press: Air Kissing on Mars, (2010) which was on the Poetry Foundation’s Contemporary Best Sellers list and described by the Los Angeles Times as, “sensual and evocative seamlessly combining humor and heartache,” Slice of Moon, (2013) nominated for a Pushcart, and called, “unexpected and sublime,” by “O” magazine, and Last Train to the Missing Planet, (2016), “full of worldly, humorous insights into life as it is,” says Janet Fitch. Kim’s work has been featured in Garrison Keillor’s « The Writer’s Almanac, » and Ted Kooser’s “American Life in Poetry,” as well as in Ploughshares, Barrow Street, Rattle and Eclipse. Her poems are included in several anthologies, including, Wide Awake: Poets of Los Angeles and Beyond, (Beyond Baroque Books/Pacific Coast Poetry Series, 2015) and Coiled Serpent: Poets Arising from the Cultural Quakes & Shifts of Los Angeles, (Tia Chucha Press. She teaches Poetry and Dreaming in the B.A. Program of Antioch University. Kim is City Poet Laureate of West Hollywood, and will hold this position through October, 2018.