Poetry by Kai Coggin

⌘ Grey Horse

Sometimes,
the urge to creak 
back toward the numbness
returns, 
a river running towards 
a collapsed ocean,

        Resist.

Perhaps, 
I cannot stand 
in the light 
without remembering 
the dark womb,
the sordid past that 
built every stone I swallowed.

Inside me
a wall is being built
and torn down simultaneously, 
a vacant shadow persists
and the music in my head
turns to silence,
impenetrable, 
these are the demons
that sometimes still appear
attached to the ankles of my growth, 
I try to shake them off,
the echoing noise of
wooden wind chimes, 
bamboo hollow clip-clops, 
a quiet stampede of grey horses
and their bodies of fog, 
muffling hope. 

I turn around 
and face the stampede,
let the smoke and dissonance
run its course through me, 
until the fog,
becomes water in my hand.




⌘ This is a Painting

This is a painting,
you are all the colors,
you are the swoop 
of delicious hue
splayed in curves, 
where the light hits 
canvas and wood
and you become this
other-than-a-dream
real shape, 
real scene that 
can be seen 
with my eyes
and hands,
I would rub my fingers 
in all your blue
and paint a new night sky, 
swim in the yellow that 
is your name 
in the morning, 
oh, this is a painting, 
in a poem, 
in a woken dream
and you, 
you are all the colors
hitting the light
and taking me
to a dimension
that breaks open in art. 




⌘ This is how to eat your past: 

​go to that place where you keep it,
maybe it is dark there,
find it,
your past,
yes, the one you try not to look at,
the one you try to grow up from,
not claim,
exclaim,
compare things to,
analyze,
hate analyzing,
use as an excuse,
try to forget.
Take it,
hold it between your fingers and thumb,
put it between your teeth and bite down
just to make sure it is real and hardened,
a golden piece of you,
lack-luster lust,
shocked by moments,
packed with triggers, 
unpack it,
lay everything out across the kitchen table
under the cheap chandelier that never stops swaying,
in the solitude of this necessary digestion,
compartmentalize the moments of bliss and disaster,
tears from laughter,
separate,
make piles,
pour yourself a glass of chilled vodka from the freezer,

drink it,
keep compartmentalizing,
look at each moment under the light 
of right now and see if it shines or not,
see what pulls out the demons
that are stuffed inside,
illumine the silenced desires,
chase down the bitter pills with sweet, 
find the bitter,
find the hurt,
separate the brighter moments from darker ones,
find the I wish I could just forget ones,
find the “I’d rather ignore this pile of 
everything that makes me cry,”
find the day your Daddy drove away after 
leaving you and mommy and sister in another country,
find learning the word divorce,
find worrying and fear,
find the day at 13 when you were raped 
by the dark hands of a stranger, 
how the stranglehold of silence 
held you for five years with a secret 
you were too ashamed to tell your mother,
find every time someone called you a fucking dyke,
find your first girlfriend telling you how she wished 
you were a man so you could get married,
find losing her too soon,
find the mistake of joining the corps of cadets,
find the hazing because you were a girl
trying to drum with men and they hated you for it,
find the bruises and the yelling,
find the jolting alarm clock of men yelling at your face,
find them foaming at the mouth with misdirected rage,
find marching in full winter dress uniform 
for hours and hours in the scorching heat
as a punishment for not voting for George W. Bush,
find Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell military,
find the public humiliation of getting kicked out
for loving a girl that never told,
(take a moment to thank the Universe that you escaped that hell),
find every time your next girlfriend 
wouldn’t hold your hand in public,
or tell anyone she was with you,
find how she was embarrassed of how fat you were,
put that up to the light, 
see what shines through,
there will be shining,
there will be rust,
find the wreckage,
find the war-torn,
find the broken pieces that you have hidden away for so long,
or tucked so far down in your chest 
that you almost forgot they were there.
Take all of those moments and collect them in your hands,
they will feel like shards of glass,
jagged pieces of yourself, 
a stained glass window explosion,
squeeze them,
turn them to water,
let the water run through your fingers 
taste it,
taste it becoming growth,
be quenched by anything that’s left,
see the water as a safe place to be born,
you won’t forget what hurt, 
but now you will not bleed as you swallow.

There is another pile of moments,
with the night comes the promise of dawn,
find the smiles now, not so broken one,
find the calm in all that thunder,
find the softness,
find the pleasure,
find the laughter,
find what looks like the first time you were kissed,
at 18, when she leaned over and kissed you,
it was your birthday, remember?
after months of you loving her and finally 
she answered your lips with yes,
taste that moment,
find that young innocent love 
that made you sneak out in the middle of the night, 
drive an hour to her house,
climb through her window she left cracked open for you,
and kiss each other so much your stomachs ached,
find leaving just before sunrise,
driving home filled with her scent on your clothes,
how chloe narcisse perfume still makes your knees weak,
find that bliss,
swallow it down so it lights up your insides,
turns your belly into a lamppost
that lights the streets of your shadows,
turns your throat into a lighthouse
that guides your heart home,
find all the moments that taste like honeysuckle,
or feel like dewdrops,
or sound like hummingbird wings,
or make you believe there is heaven,

find seeing your students learn to love writing 
because you taught them,
find speaking your mind and not being afraid
that the truth you know will make you lose someone,
find how a woman loved your body when you hated it,
how she caressed every big curve as a supple garden and made you love yourself,
find knowing yourself,
find discovering Infinity,
find that moment you felt ONE with the Universe,
find the moonlight canoe ride under the stars with her, 
find making love on the sands of an ocean shore 
at midnight under a watchful moon,
find riding a horse on that same shore the next day like a warrior 
and feeling liberation bounding through your thighs,
waves crashing and the heat of the day rising from your skin,
collect those moments,
yes all of them,
moments such as this we’ll call Beauty,
take all that Beauty,
it maybe looks like diamonds
or a handful of stars,
see it in all of its shimmering glory,
reflecting galaxies and moon shine and firelight
in all of its magnificence,
and yes, 
swallow that, too,
let it become you.

Eat all of the gleaming.

Eat all of the gleaming. 

​

Bio: Kai Coggin is a queer Filipino-American poet living in the valley of a small mountain in Hot Springs National Park, AR. She received her B.A. in English, Poetry, and Creative Writing from Texas A&M University. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Assaracus, Lavender Review, Calamus Journal, Blue Heron Review, Yellow Chair Review, and elsewhere. 

​Kai is the author of two full-length collections, PERISCOPE HEART (Swimming with Elephants, 2014) and WINGSPAN (Golden Dragonfly Press, 2016), as well as a spoken word album called SILHOUETTE (2017). Her poetry has been nominated twice for The Pushcart Prize, as well as Bettering American Poetry 2015, and Best of the Net 2016. www.kaicoggin.com 

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