after Joseph Cornell & Emily Dickinson
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The sky is a bucketof lapis lazuli pigment
tipped
onto a stretched canvas
through the window
of my simple room,
framed by bleached wood
and square-wire
shutters
that offer me and bees
a reprieve from
the world’s gaze.
After you visit from
your own box,
I don’t perish
from bliss and delight—
I feel fortified
by my technicolored
daydreams
unspooled in flesh,
dopamine coasting
swift currents.
Then weeks of bleeding
sunsets,
and memories
cling like grass burrs
picked up
while gardening,
ready to collapse
at a soft touch.
To tame my brain’s
electric filaments
I scrawl doting notes
carried by messenger
pigeons, launching
my songs into sauntering clouds.
I linger in the warm
bath of you until
it grows shivery,
attempt to gently
shake you out
like fine sand
from a white towel.
electric filaments
I scrawl doting notes
carried by messenger
pigeons, launching
my songs into sauntering clouds.
I linger in the warm
bath of you until
it grows shivery,
attempt to gently
shake you out
like fine sand
from a white towel.
I would, no doubt,
be lonelier
without the loneliness
that clutches my chest with
a funk that sometimes
only sunlight can evaporate—
or busy hands
in a patch of peonies.
If the space between
two lovers
is as immense as
a keening ocean,
hope is the finger
of Italy summoning
empty lungs to fill again.
Between our pages
I press the downy feather
you once left
on my doorstep,
waiting for your return
envelope.
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Kristen Keckler teaches creative writing at Mercy University in Dobbs Ferry, New York. Her work has appeared in L’Esprit Literary Review, The Argyle, The Collidescope, The Iowa Review, Vestal Review, Free State Review, and other journals. She can be found rummaging around garage sales and thrift stores, on the lookout for unexpected treasures. “My Blue Peninsula” was inspired by the Joseph Cornell shadow box that was, in turn, inspired by Emily Dickinson’s poem #405.
Well done!
ReplyDeleteMy Blue Island
ReplyDeleteOf Christmas Cookies
Inspired by Joseph Cornell and Emily Dickinson and Kristen Keckler
The sky is like a rough stone laid over a wax canvas stretched across
the broken window of my lost room.
The window,
the white wooden frame,
and the network of Morse coded dots and dashes
protect me and the bees in the clostered whirlwind of life.
When you leave the hive,
it doesn't just feel good to me -
I feel a surge of sugared energy.
In my life,
I see it in a dream,
in a dopamine rush,
and then in my wallet, plump
at sunset, these memories sprout,
like a garden, a dry bouquet of weeds
that crumble at the slightest touch.
To satisfy the restless thoughts in my head, I write simple messages to the carrier pigeons and send their songs to the clouds. I put you in the hot tub for a long time until the water boils. I try to shake you off me gently, as if you were pouring white sand on a towel. Without this solitude, I would probably be even more depressed. This solitude rests heavily on my chest, sometimes leaving behind a melancholy that only sunlight can release – or only hands hidden among peonies. When the distance between lovers is as great as a stormy sea, hope, like an Italian's outstretched finger, invites you to empty your lungs and fill them again. As I leafed through the pages, I tapped the pumpkin you had left by the door; wrapped in an airy envelope, waiting for you to return.