Poetry by Kika Dorsey

      Stephen A. Wolfe CC




Poetry

tilled land
at my feet
sowing seed
writing with eyelashes
dipped in moonlight
their curve my closed mouth

I’ve closed my eyes for you
I’ve gathered phosphenes
and a hermit’s cane
as he traversed a barren mountain
all my writing a palette
of empty and hard silver stone
or land brimming with grain
my pain punctuating
what can heal it
so you ask if writing is therapeutic
and I say it depends
on what ending I choose
or what you believe
the hermit learned
or how his limp
revised his vision
of mortality

to be a writer
is to garnish an ache
of the blossom
and how it breaks
to rise and open
to a temporary light
to be a writer
is to dissect
that very ache
and build a muscle
over the cold, hard bone

it could be a better world
the writer believes
a feast under
the shadow of silk tarps
the worm freed
the lark of you singing
when the morning is dark
when all you can see
is the way of the corn husk
how you peel it
or the landscape
where the hermit
sets his cane down
and etches with it
a rune, an oracle
sung with your pen
however dissonant
or out of tune
however delicate
as the eyelashes
that protect your vision
and a mouth that utters
beneath the breath
it is too hard to say goodbye
there is always more
to say





Kika Dorsey is an author in Boulder, Colorado.  She has a PhD in Comparative Literature and her books include the poetry collections Beside Herself, Rust, Coming Up for Air, Occupied: Vienna is a Broken Man and Daughter of Hunger, which won the Colorado Authors’ League Award for best poetry collection, the novel As Joan Approaches Infinity and her recent collection of poetry, Good Ash. She has been nominated numerous times for the Pushcart Prize and for Best of Net. Currently, she is a lecturer at the University of Colorado in literature and creative writing. In her free time she swims miles in pools and runs and hikes in the open space of Colorado’s mountains and plains.
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