Poetry By Kai Coggin

r. nial bradshaw CC




Just Talk 

I was taught
to swallow my pain
not to talk through it
not to talk it out
not to express it
but to hold it in
a blade made poison
not to make more waves
than the tsunamis already crashing 

ancestral DNA strands leave me stranded 
without a lifeline to cling to 
when it comes to conflict
to confrontation
to chaos

asian quiet subservience 
wanting to break free 
from
a history of martyrs
a lineage of sacrifice 
laurels of suffering 

pain does not bring holiness

mid-life
still
I run
like a mouse
hide like a child
in the repressed emotional state
that I still trigger slip into
hazardous cliff of psyche 
and I can so easily veer off track
dangerous unprocessed hole
and I am the rabbit swirling down down down

communication roots in commune 
to share one's intimate thoughts and feelings
with someone else
especially on a spiritual level
communication 
does not have to be scary, little girl

think of the weight lifted through voice
think of the sudden wings 

the elephant in the room
is my own bursting wide heart
waiting
to embrace womanhood
waiting 
to tell the child in me to speak
waiting 
to hold then release her
waiting 
to sing the music of our cells

I'm clutching onto stars
to find a way out of a biography of dark --

the light has been in my mouth all along. 





Kai Coggin (she/her) is the inaugural Poet Laureate of Hot Springs, AR, and author of four collections, most recently Mining for Stardust (FlowerSong Press 2021). She is a Certified Master Naturalist, a K-12 Teaching Artist in poetry with the Arkansas Arts Council, and host of the longest running consecutive weekly open mic series in the country—Wednesday Night Poetry. Recently awarded the 2021 Governor’s Arts Award, twice named “Best Poet in Arkansas” by the Arkansas Times (2020, 2023), her poetry has been nominated six times for The Pushcart Prize, and Best of the Net 2016, 2018, 2021— awarded in 2022. Ten of Kai’s poems are going to the moon with the Lunar Codex project, and on earth they have appeared or are forthcoming in POETRY, Prairie Schooner, Best of the Net, Cultural Weekly, SOLSTICE, SWWIM, Sinister Wisdom, Lavender Review, and elsewhere. She lives with her wife and their two dogs in Hot Springs National Park.   
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