Kathleen Hellen
Poetry
Kathleen Hellen is the author of The Only Country was the Color of My Skin, the award-winning collection Umberto’s Night, and two chapbooks, The Girl Who Loved Mothra and Pentimento. Featured on Poetry Daily and Verse Daily, her work has appeared or is forthcoming in American Letters and Commentary, Barrow Street, Cimarron Review, Colorado Review, The Massachusetts Review, New American Writing, New Letters, North American Review, Poetry East, and West Branch, among others. Hellen has won the Thomas Merton poetry prize and prizes from the H.O.W. Journal and Washington Square Review. For more on Kathleen visit: https://www.kathleenhellen.com/.
Trail, cleft
Atop the iceandrock—who knew
we’d reached too far to
one side of each other? how could
we? Cold
in our suspicions. Dressed
as snowmen
arms outstretched as far as
sleeves allow
the woodstarved season
lying in collapse, the snow in temperatures
degrading
the chill that leads to early freeze. To vultures
The proof in coma—
who knew
the nature
of the frozenwater?
The wandering. Our boots like hooves
The tawny hour
—After Mallarmé
two o’clock, the snow leaves off
the offspring of the day, the doe leaving
the fawn on spindle-legs
to fend in camouflage
the yellow grass, the leaves
I’d forgotten
to rake and set out for collection, leaves
piling up
under the non-
fruit-bearing cherry like
so many things these days (desire!)
I’d forgotten
the fawn
a statue on the winter lawn
but for the ears’ fantastic scissors