Sarah Kernsey
2 Poems
Cover Art: Nam June Paik, Untitled (Robots), 1997 SFMOMA
Nonage
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I can look beyond the rain;
I can see where the clouds came. Pacified as the westerly ocean that spreads for the sunset. I am beyond pubescence, a paragraph past period. Made no motions, made no protests during nights Lying awake numbed to need. I could sense a tingling in the room that mollified me, except I could never tell. The moon could. It tugged on me like a water bed. I swelled and brimmed like every other celestial body in its glow. Wrist reached beyond palm, beyond knuckle, beyond proximity as distal as the dawn. It’d hurt my family, no one would believe me. It’s so beyond physical, beyond memory When you can’t trust yourself anymore, When your nerves congeal at the touch of another, When self is seared and joy is down to its last letter. I wish lightning would split the furtive moon beam Tonight, I wish it would expose the perpetrator in its flashbulb, releasing The latent images into the open night air for morning to reveal And relieve a trembling axiom: I am a prisoner riddled with fingerprints. There was a struggle framed as mine. (Which I guess it might be). I know the promises and the conditions. I can smell humidity. Guilty, yet nothing’s fertilizing me. At best, with dishonorable discharge, past the mist, I think of myself as a dewy sapling and wonder what will become of me. |
Where Winter Runs Out
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There’s something ironic about her marriage.
She knows he’ll switch seasons or destruct or Spiral up like a phoenix… As long as his essence is there She’ll flick his caustic tongue Out of her eye like a lash. As long as winter melts, She patiently endures Shoveling the white heavyweight With hands bled dry. Now, he wants to sprint out of winter. She wants to hold him, Go home to warmer waters, Western winds. They keep talking about climate change Though the seasons are set to stay. The wrinkles were pressed out of a casual garment Unbound from Old Man Winter’s bight on NJ last year. |
Sarah Kersey is a poet, musician, and x-ray tech from New Jersey. Her work has recently appeared in Fourth & Sycamore, and has poems forthcoming in Scarlet Leaf Review. Kersey's poetry has also appeared in Columbia Journal (online), Thistle Magazine, Verse Magazine, among other journals. She is an avid fan of Star Wars and the Sonic the Hedgehog series.
