1
If in poetry court she was calledto testify on matters where I was condemned to imprisonment: parking my egoat a broken meter, line violations, forced rhyme, dealing stanzaics to children, shootingoff my mouth, getting cute, for even thislatest attempt at verse, she would tell the whole truth, she would admit from the pitof her unsung brilliance, from all of the paintings and poemsshe herself has been makingand storing in the vast empire of her singing soul, your Honor, my daughter is guiltyof plagiarizing my cells.Kristen Henderson
2
What if there was an uncanny moment when all the birds were grounded from Cape Town to Juneau, and everywhere between--all feathers frozen in a universal stutter, so quick as to make a snail of light, and even Stephen Hawking's mind would miss it?Kristen Henderson
3
There’s a pressure at all hours of the day only a poem can assuage.Kristen Henderson
4
...we’re not even really hiking, more like meandering in cinematic light.Kristen Henderson
5
Sure, I watched the workmen come and lower large pieces of rotten sheetrock and lift new clean panels on a pulleyfrom that same window months ago, and I could have written then, but I must have sensed her coming, the smoker, so I waited.Kristen Henderson
6
...you hold a poemthat functions half as personalnote and half as telescopeto the heightsawaiting us all.Kristen Henderson
7
And the sculptors will shape the soil for the writers to stretch the seedsfor the patient painters who sketch the petals they will shade in alabaster and gold. Their sweat is the rain. Maybe the jazzman will send us a rose.Kristen Henderson
8
Would it be enough to rock on a stormless sea with each our separate memories tuned to the state of the sinking sun?Kristen Henderson
9
I tell you once and for all–in front of the angel pictures on the wall, that I am not a host to load-bearing ghosts or headyentities, and if I was ever holy, I have fallen farinto the dense atmosphere of the living.Kristen Henderson
10
Even the bees I'd swear were sent to protect us in the delicate business of hives and honey are stung to silence by the news that something winged has lost its flight.Kristen Henderson
11
Dear Anonymous, I've got a secret I know you can keep it because you don't really exist.... This is what shapes you, this is what makes you as authentic as you are fake.Kristen Henderson
12
It was as if someone had leftthe bird thereas a kind of telegramof feathers, oily feathersthat looked like they’d struggled, shuttered a little before letting gointo flightforever.Kristen Henderson
13
She was so cool, as she knew, ankles crossed at the puckered hem of granite gray sweatpants, and she also knew I was watching from the open doorof the B train–watching her pose in apparent comfort at the girder of this city thoroughfare.Kristen Henderson