Poetry by Catherine Keller

A Night Where Nothing Bad Happens in Buffalo

Bubbles floating out of the top corner apartment on Allen St,
Buffalo breweries and wings with a bite
You weren’t prepared for.
My silo city
People that posh don’t really venture
Passed the mall,
They don’t know my city like I do,
They only go to Canal Side
While I’ve walked right up to the fence of Love Canal,
The burial ground of toxic waste,
Drove through the numbered streets with squatters,
Seen the homeless sleeping under highways,
If you seclude the city to two streets,
How much are you really exploring?
There’s more to Buffalo than booze.

Tied shoes dangling on wires
Like the city’s windchimes,
Black Lives Matter banners and
Rainbow flags adorn front porches.
Bumming cigarettes off strangers outside bars,
Chatting about the universe,
A man asks my friend if he can draw
A caricature of him while
I’m talking to a non-local about astral projection
Over a cigarette and
A poet comes by and offers a trade
A poem for a cigarette,
And I listen to him spit wisdom
Thinking he deserves more than
The toxins I hand over.
Spark meets inhale,
Smoke rises to meet the bubbles
Reaching for the stars.

Buffalo is a place where strangers on the street
Will tell you they believe in you
When you need to hear it,
But aside from the hipsters
Who are here for the aesthetic,
This is the city of misfits
And you can leave,
But you can always come back.

​


Private Astral Plane of Pen & Paper

Feeling like a fraud
Not writing and waiting for the weekend
Only looking forward to 104 days
Out of the year, aside from holidays,
156 counting Fridays
This taunting timeline.
When I finally find moments of peace
And put my puzzle of a brain
In some kind of order,
And my fingers reach for pen and paper.

When the calling comes,
Ink travels time and space,
Transcending dimensions
Drifting through my private astral planes
Constellation chariots connecting energies
Tapestries woven by wonder.
Subconscious seeping through ink-scribbled pages,
Searching for something less superficial
Kaleidoscope of confusion,
Flashes of fractals my mind pieces together.

Sometimes feeling more like a fraud
When I write
Maybe because I’m not accustomed
To being so honest with myself
It’s not for the viewers and
I’m not a spectacle
Trying to make me sound poetic is like
Trying to extract honey from hornets
I don’t want my writing to be
A form of wallowing
It can’t always be my saving grace
But it can at least serve as a parachute to peace
When the world won’t stop dropping underneath me.
My writer’s block is really my subconscious
Refusing to be honest.

When it’s midnight
And I’m alone with the moon
A waxing crescent
The same phase as the night I was born
But this is no phase
And I’m impatient for it to pass.
These lunar and planetary energies
Led me to loneliness
But I am called to conjure a cosmic shift
That can redefine my destiny.
When you are content
And find peace with yourself
Only then can you prosper.

​

Born and bred in Buffalo, Catherine Keller published her first poetry chapbook, ‘Sonder’, in June 2018, which is available on Amazon. She has also had poetry published in ten literary magazines including Wilderness House Literary Review, Tipton Poetry Journal, The Stray Branch, and Hooligan Magazine, and articles in the Buffalo News, Esperanza Magazine and Buffalo Rising. She has been writing creatively for as long as she can remember and is also writing about ten other stories that will be novels and short story collections (eventually). Some of her favorite poets are Savannah Brown, Caitlyn Siehl, Rudy Francisco and Siaara Freeman. When she’s not writing, she spends her time chasing sunsets, waterfalls and free food, which you can check out on her Instagram @catiekeller.

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