Past Life Review

I.

This opera was edited.
aria added late.
libretto incompleto,
program containing typos.

Still, she sang from a place of enchantment,
sequestered veins now flow towards interlocking chambers.

II.

Slice into eruption
The Non-newness.
Lava from the gapes of crust,
A feldspar expelled from Earth’s sinuses.

III.

Fish or swim conundrums.
I have known blossoms
To be suckled by the bees.

IV.

Garlic is a hepatic ointment.

V.

Not enough art to go around.

VI.

Depicting luxurious malfeasance.

VII.

Destructive grit on the surface.
Uncomfortable with what I’ve received

VIII.

Liberation through sleep.

IX.

Peace comes through forgetting.

The Spiritual Marketplace

ok well
birth
opens a locket

and an organ
falls
out

blood has its sparkle
poked
through the mirror

inside my body
a jewel from the earth
meets a jewel from the sky

ok kiss me while
i’m scheming
Access

Altar

                                                                      after Franz Wright

I have a candle always burning
always burning inside me
I have a candle burning inside me always, for my children

my mother was a lonely child
the lonely child of a lonely child
who birthed another (lonely child)

separate strands of pearls
one given to my daughter
I’ll make one for my son

for my children and their mothers
I have a candle burning

Nightingale

                                                                      after Hans Christian Andersen

Nightingale
I’m disappointed in your song

I want to feel like the floating sea
I want to feel like the night’s breath

can it be burgundy
can you sing it on the tundra

can your jeweled bird
stop death for the emperor?

obsolete the answer when
knowing is the song

the nightingale, she prefers
to sing alone in the green wood.






Clare Kelly is the founding editor of Hesse Press. She is the author of Future Ruins We Can Visit Now (2014) and the forthcoming The Number Thirty-Six On Fire. She lives with her husband and their lovely children near Los Angeles.

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