wildly akimbo,
i miss or graze the
easy target who arrogantly loaded my guns
it was always better to
conceal carry
my own spells
and sharpshoot
with a silencer on my tongue:
fail, fail, fall
and patiently
watch the death notices
Author: ©️K.T. 2026
Zone of Interest, North American Continent
audio: reading a dream[t] poem: “dynamic rib”
Continue reading “audio: reading a dream[t] poem: “dynamic rib””this poem was inspired by and derived from a dream that occurred
during the 03:00 hour on February 15, 2023
dream[t] poetry: “dynamic rib”
this poem is inspired and directly derived from a dream i woke up from/with
on February 15, 2023
and is an experiment of raw dreaming dialogue and internal dreaming monologue to express the dreamt experience in poetic format using minimal metaphoric phrasing and language
a familiar woman sitting on the couch
in your house asks me
how many hours do you have to yourself
i am perplexed: “all of them”
they’re all my hours
the roof begins leaking
the one you fixed last year
the one i was reading under while she asked me about my hours
i noticed when the book
suddenly became smattered with rain drops
water drops or raindrops, what’s the difference
it was a Rugrats coloring book
i don’t know what page i was on
but Angelica was waiting to be colored-in and one of the boys was saying “mommy” in a speech bubble
it must’ve been a thought bubble because the Rugrats, except for Angelica, are not verbal
the ides of february
the way mary hatch looks at george bailey
Continue reading “the ides of february”
Sentience & the exclusive velveteening of pets and familiar animals
My dog, Woody, wakes up and wants breakfast – not just breakfast, but a very expensive kibble prepared with gravy and a quarter cup of warmed pumpkin (his dinner is more elaborate – it’s offered like a buffet plate or poke bowl). He eats, goes outside to do his business and investigate a little, comes back inside, and stops and sits on the rug to think, “Where is my baby?”
He goes around the house on a search for it, and comes back with a flying squirrel toy, ready to play. He bumps the laptop off my thighs several times to engage me, and we play. Later, he lets me know he’d like to go outside; we head to the basement, but he doesn’t want to wear his coat – he knows dogs don’t wear coats, and he hides behind the full clotheslines; we come to an agreement, and he permits me to put the coat on him.
We walk, but I don’t want to go to the park, so we walk through the neighborhoods; but when Woody gets to an arterial street which borders the park, he stops, looks, then looks at me, and pulls, to suggest that we should turn south right there and go to the park – because he’s actually in the mood for the park.
When we finally arrive home after our very long walk, i dry his paws and legs one by one and also his undercarriage; he kisses my face in an annoyed gratitude; then, he lets me know he wants to be close – he has two comfy dog beds and my son’s vacant bed, but he wants to be near – and climbs into a deep club chair made for one – onto my lap – he weighs 65 lbs.
Continue reading “Sentience & the exclusive velveteening of pets and familiar animals”bardo
somebody, quick!
pinch me,
call me,
talk to me,
see me,
kiss me,
curse me,
feed me,
bathe me,
fuck me,
flip me off,
for god’s sake
I can’t tell
if I survived
that last
collision
Continue reading “bardo”poem for poet: Nayyirah Waheed, Salt
[ The Lethal Salinity of The Truth ]
Her words are not for me
not about me
Her words are not for me
not about me
Repeat
am i allowed
To float Her words aloud
To sink them in my mind
To lap them from the page
i accidentally swallow,
then gulp down Her Salt words/
like when the surf breaks,
surprising the exhilarated, Great Lakes girl
with a mouthful of seawater
during her first-ever swim in the Ocean
Her words were not meant for me
Her words were not meant for me
Repeat
but
they quenched then drowned me anyway
Her Light, her light
it’s mid evening
east of The Lake
and the night is dawning
like a second morning
the Full Moon’s light
in a clearer sky
gleams through the generous panes
of this blessed, old green house
February’s Snow Moon is glowing
in a familiar dance with her beloved Earth//
Sun, their invisible chaperone, is voyeur to their touchless, perfect tango
a family of four deer
mother and children, i think/
are gleaners here tonight
while i consume their Moon play
silent and sitting in the dark, i admire:
coat, tallow, hooves and warm flow of blood
is all that’s between them
and this howling wind and frozen ground
let me mimic their resilience, their integrity
i’ve been so weak, so broken this winter
a fractioned shadow, i am disintegrating, disappearing / my light given or grifted away
holy ghost: a statement
“The most important thing for everyone in Gringolandia is to have ambition and become ‘somebody,’ and frankly, I don’t have the least ambition to become anybody.”
Frida Kahlo
in the end, we are all just holy ghosts,
ghosts who sometimes want to feel, or be seen, or be felt by others who may also be seeking, whether they know it or not — and whether they become known forever after or become, forever unknown — to us.
if anyone were to speculate — or attempt to draw definitions or executive summaries about me — as one particular, ambitionless, ghostly being,
and, as a mother, poet, crone and Earthling — or about my collection of words, opinions, ideas, poems, photos, ephemera, art, beliefs and altars — now, or when i’m dead and gone,
— in the end, and at the beginning,
this is and was, always a place for me to fundamentally
better understand
my Self — for my self & by my self.
for me,
to try to understand my relationship to Others, to the World, to the Earth;
and also,
for me,
to try to understand my relationship to my creativity – the conception, process and act of creating
and finally,
to try to understand this strange existence, in and of itself.
no one else has ever been essential to experience, interact with, interpret, interrogate or validate any of it, ever — yet, they are welcomed to do so — if they happen upon me
Continue reading “holy ghost: a statement”Wolf Lake
for
+Willie Mack Riche+
a prologue included for father’s day:
the man who bought my kindergarten clothes when i was four years old and paid my Lutheran school monthly tuition for eight years; the man who had the rusty 1972 VW Bug, gifted to me by my boyfriend for high school graduation restored over the summer before my freshman year of college; the man who adored both my son aka “monster” and “bam-bam”, and my first dog, Digby aka “hound”; the man who endured both the devastating loss of custody, subsequent parental abduction of — and then, the tragic death of his only biological child, a son.
the man who never got the chance to properly retire and healthfully and happily collect his 30-year, hard-earned Teamster’s union pension — and just go fishing all day because he became acutely ill with undiagnosed kidney failure, and spent the last years of his life on thrice-weekly, hours-long dialysis treatment — and his last six months on Earth dying from a rare, aggressive and metastatic cancer.
may his spirit know peace eternally.
gingerly cradling his namesake Mack
on the first full day of the baby’s life,
and who we brought home on
Father’s Day, 1994
“This used to be my playground.”
and, our proxy for church on spring, summer and fall sabbaths.
These were the halcyon days.
Load up the International Harvester TravelAll with wooden doors and quarter panels – it has two gas tanks, you know.
Bought it used, but pristine
on payments – from the showroom on Logan Boulevard and Elston Avenue with zero credit history and all the usury
Have mercy.
Follow me, and I will make you fishers of fish.
He will bait your hook on the bamboo pole he bought you.
Later, you will insist on the “Pocket Fisherman” – as seen on TV.
the bearable light of being
we adapt, we mitigate.
beholding devastation,
in a moment of transcendent light,
we’ll call it beauty.
i am no exception.
thaw
i add my most intentional breaths to the land, to the atmosphere,
for the birch sapling, for a man i knew,
both, bent over
frozen
in a forced deference
mimicking reverence
it won’t, can’t, hold
[it never does]
with every exhalation
my pink lungs
conjure warm winds
from red blood cells
incanting
under my tender palate
over my dormant tongue,
though my worn enamel
beyond my hermit lips:
Feed the wildlife! (a radical imperative)
I set out natural stone salt-licks year-round for deer on the perimeter of the land I occupy [I’ve witnessed birds, and I suspect other wildlife enjoy/require them too].
I buy bags of apples on sale and try to set out 5 lbs a couple evenings per week for the deer during winter; I cut up a few apples for possums and rabbits nightly. I set out all spent fruit too, rather than composting it.
January 28, 2021
A deer foraging not on apples I set out, but on “weeds” – wildflowers, herbs and grasses
just beneath the triptych picture windows of my living room as I went to open the drapes to let in the Full Moon’s light – just before retiring to bed.
I feel like the salt lick, the small sweet apples and fruit scraps are my insignificant attempt at respect, alms, honoring and reparations for all we have destroyed — and for the survivors who endure and remain in the middle of a cold winter. This is agro country, and not a speck of corn or fruit is left behind for wild animals in the barren cornfields and orchards that were once forests filled with acorns, walnuts, pine nuts, pawpaws and twigs — and prairies filled with grasses, herbs, seeds and wildflowers.
Continue reading “Feed the wildlife! (a radical imperative)”human calculus
there is no math
more racking and wrenching than the equations of
human calculus
to find oneself
not as integer or integral,
as both function and derivative,
yet, not a real variable,
as undifferentiated,
only momentarily tangential,
and
Continue reading “human calculus”
the limineen | earthling, poet & crone 