Poetry by Kelly Brice Baron

     Will Fisher CC




MENSES PRAYER


Praise the ancient pain of my body. 
Sing the shedding of what we carried 
this month, every month, 
stitching failure into the fabric of my life.
Shock the garment clean in coldest water. 
There is a loveliness to incompletion, 
the way a robin’s egg lying cracked 
on the sidewalk is always an aria. 
Moan our aria of what it is to be feared, 
to move through life as unfathomable 
as a paper wasp floating on the surface 
of azure pool water, in need of a drink. 
Bless the ache of the familiar.
Bless its tireless fight against containment
through every note of its chromatic life 
and death—a soft strawberry threat
angering into wild pickled beet, 
oily black plum relenting to rusted tire iron. 
O bleed. O bless the wisdom of my body
reminding me through pain, through color,
through the haze of my own willful ignorance:
my rebirth may look a lot like violence.

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DAD, A CYCLE

​
Whose love conflated 
keeping me safe
with keeping me afraid

unwittingly teaching me
to remain loving
through my fear.

​


Kelly Brice Baron's poems have appeared in Another Chicago Magazine, Pear Noir!, Weave Magazine, and elsewhere. She lives in Chicago with her beloved dumpster cat, Booty.