Two Poems – Jacqueline Kirkpatrick

High Tide

My family has perfected the art of keeping secrets
Skilled at telling lies through rotted teeth
Whiskey and loose tobacco spilled on splintered coffee tables
Shuddering at the sound of the tick tick tick tick 
Every time a contestant takes a spin on the Wheel of Fortune
Asking the youngest in the room
Without a please or thank you
To find a lighter 

Sunrise For Jack Kerouac

A poem for a poem


I gave Jake the last inhale
Watching a willow tree in a cow pasture turn to gold in the
Acidic sunrise of a July we tried for years to forget. 
The long streams of branch swaying in a breeze that bumped my gooses
From collar bone to sternum
Raised buttons of oooooh, of ahhhhh,
Of push them, push them - - we will never get out of here
if we don't move faster
 
Before I fall apart
Jake falls asleep against the wind
Shielded dreaming of a riddle on a Popsicle stick
His tiny fingers clutching it
Jamming it into his mother’s wringing hands
Asking her to just tell him what it means 
that he can longer read French (as I flip the tent stake
Mallet around and around, leav
ing bruises in the ground, wondering if it is God  or my child I should apologize to-) 

I Didn’t Got to AWP But…

Sadly, as a single mom, I couldn’t make it to AWP this year. But I’ve been keeping busy! So I didn’t go to AWP but I did:

• Google search “best places to drink in Minneapolis”
• Text people at AWP asking for more updates
• Sent a photo of myself to those at AWP with a text of “I miss you”
• Submit some nonfiction to a journal that was at AWP
• Checked my horoscope for the weekend
• Doodled six hearts and one stick boy
• Went on Twitter and searched for #awp
• Went on Twitter and searched for #awp15

Four Poems – Jacqueline Kirkpatrick

Autobiography

(for Frank O’Hara)

 

When I was his wife

I mopped the kitchen floor while

listening to Mozart on vinyl

drinking gin and tonics, alone.

 

Nothing gave me joy but Symphony No. 21 in A Major. Not even

Symphony No. 14 or Symphony No. 29. They just swirled

around my head never stopping,

never pausing to see if I was all right.

 

When he came home

begging for supper

I kept the bedroom door locked with a note taped to the peeling white paint,

“I have a migraine.  Cold cuts in the fridge.”

 

Here I am

in a graveyard full of stones with one belonging to him.

I am laughing myself

Awake.