National Poetry Month 2011

Since April is National Poetry Month and Kate Bush has a new album on the way, I though it was appropriate to share one of my poems from the current issue of Assaracus literary journal. If you haven't entered to win one of the books in my Big Poetry Giveaway, scroll down a couple of posts and leave a comment (or if you're too lazy, just click this link). A whole slew of poets are taking part in the Giveaway and Kelli Russell Agodon has the full list posted at her blog, Book of Kells.

Kate Bush Appears on Night Flight, 1981

Midnight in the forbidden living room,

past my parents’ bedroom, closing doors quietly

behind me, unknowingly opening a path 

from which I will never veer, even later

when I become older, succumb to any zeitgeist.

I turn on the TV and she somersaults

across the screen, startling the rolling vertical hold

into stillness, her siren voice makes me fumble

in the dark for volume control, I put my hand

against the screen, feel the static in my fingertips,

a transference of energy in 1981 that delineates

past and present, a woman who calls herself Cathy,

wants to come in through the window.

But she wasn’t coming through, I was going in,

my link to her a series of hot boxes where she

would appear without warning over decades

like the Virgin, her songs a catechism, her name

a prayer I chanted at the backs of retreating lovers,

divorcing parents and death, and even in her absence,

the music never faltered like I did,

songs willing pills back into bottles

Twenty-seven years ago I put on my armor,

never had a ring put on my finger, blew kisses

across the ocean, for inspiration and strength,

for God to keep her even when he wasn’t keeping me,

and even now, when I am driving or dancing,

walking in Los Angeles or London, the song remains

the same, her name an utterance: Kate, Kate, Kate.

-- Collin Kelley