Poetry by Kendra Whitfield

    Taber Andrew Bain CC



Sacrifice

I gave up being right                                                                                                                       
for Lent in 2014
and haven’t taken it back up since.

That was the year my brother died, 
my husband left, 
the dog disappeared.

It didn’t make sense                                                                       
after that to point out how                                                                                
wrong other people were. 

So what if they say “choreograph” instead of “coordinate”? 
Use a spoon handle instead of a screwdriver? 
Or a shoe for a hammer?

Bring a chainsaw to a fistfight,
no one argues with you
but you don't make friends.

That was also the year the cherry tree
bloomed for the first time and 
I started believing in miracles.




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Babel

I need to learn what it means to love completely.
I always hold back.
That’s a lie.

I need to learn how to love completely again.
I knew how once.
I get tired of learning new languages.

You know, how lovers share a vocabulary.
The worst part of losing a love is moving through a world where
no one speaks the same language.

We are all, by necessity, polyglots.
But incomprehensible, ununderstandable because
No one loves us the same way twice.

I can wish anyone a “Blanca Navidad” 
they’ll think I’m wishing them a “white Christmas”- 
only you will know the snowy, starry 

Christmas Eve, and my blonde mink 
and the hot toddy cribbage game 
and twinkling lights gleaming eyes

how the shortbread crumbs stuck to my
lipstick and you licked them away 
when my mom wasn’t looking.

There are twelve steps between 
that Blanca Navidad and a tabula rasa -
I have fallen on every one.

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Kendra Whitfield lives and writes on the southern edge of the northern boreal forest.  When not writing, she can be found basking in sunbeams on the back deck or swimming laps at the local pool.  Her poetry has been published by Beyond the Veil Press and Community Building Art Works.
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