Poetry By Kai-Lilly Karpman

Stacey MacNaught CC




The Gate

I asked God for a guard dog 
and the Moon gave me a gate. 

It appeared at the end 
of The Meadow. I didn’t want 

to cross through it. 
You’re not supposed to admit this 

but I was hoping to be saved. 
Wasn’t there a way to stay, 

in The Place I made. When I got lonely 
I tore my hands apart and buried them. 

They sprung up like willows, green 
and weeping. I was making something 

of myself. This was my work for years. 
I made a forest in The Place. 

I lived alone and was unharmed. 
Once a month, the meadow grass lit 

up silver cold-- bright in full 
moonlight. The moon would turn 

her old face of annihilation toward me. 
You can learn to love 

if you walk through that gate. 
My forest of hands reached out

for me, shaking in their lonely wind. 
I had myself buried here for a lifetime. 

I asked about the dog again 
so the moon turned to knife 

and sank into the tree line. 
It was her way of punishing me 

for acting like a man. I heard voices 
beyond the gate, asking me to come 

through, but they couldn’t tell me who 
they were. The voices insisted 

that they were people, too. 
Those people began to reach 

for me, their kindness like sunlight 
tangled in a bush. I thought it was always September 

through the gate, the most illuminated 
yet worried month. There were no animals in The Place, 

but I heard that a baby horse can run 
as soon as it’s born. Couldn’t I remain 

who I’ve always been. God was firm 
with me when the moon was exhausted:

You're not like the foal 
for the foal has nothing to learn 

and never asked me for anything. 






The Gate pt. 2, Here

On the other side of the gate, I am not forest 
I am singular and time 

can touch me and does often.
September can be killed 

like anything else, and always 
returns forgivingly orange. The Moon 

continues to flash her teeth at me,
but rounded for a night when I walked 

through her gifted gate. I learn
that’s the best she can do. 

People Here are kindly, and try
to comfort each other but rarely 

do it right. In fact, we usually 
get it horribly wrong, God says. 

I do the same tasks as everyone else
and have stopped burying myself. 

This is how we love each other 
in the Real World.

The Moon is very protective of the ecosystem 
Here and worries that my willows 

could overtake the land. 
I am considered invasive.

Many animals live Here, we eat half
and love the others, depending. I have a cat

who can kill anything smaller than her
and nothing bigger. She rarely kills for fun. 

We are all working on a way
to touch each other and not starve. 

The Days are not a test. They pass by
in a friendly way, though still weary of me. 

They can see I try to be a good citizen 
of even their hated afternoons. 

I have not discovered a groundbreaking 
or brilliant solution for loneliness.

Not knowing is considered the polite standard.
God is tucked even farther away Here, but 

I still always ask for something. 

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Kai-Lilly Karpman is a writer, educator, and translator from Los Angeles, California. She has been previously published in Plume, Image Magazine, Passengers, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of the Columbia University 2022 teaching fellowship, the Columbia University Word for Word travel and research grant, the two-time winner of the John Curtis Memorial Prize in Poetry, and the recipient of the Barbara Sicherman Prize in English scholarship. Her song lyrics have appeared in Mz. Marvel and The Marvels soundtracks.