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CAUGHT IN THE NET 82 - POETRY BY
KILEEN GILROY
Series Editor - Jim Bennett
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Introduction by Jim Bennett
Hello. Welcome to the next in the series of CITN featured poets. We will be looking at the work of a different poet in each edition and I hope it will help our readers to discover some new and exciting writing. This series is open to all to submit and I am now keen to read new work for this series.
You can join the CITN mailing list at
-
http://www.poetrykit.org/pkl/index.htm
and following the links for Caught in the Net.
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Before she knows I am awake I creep to the stairs Clutching the railing Where I watch her mascara run Like black rivers Flowing through the heart of the earth.
from; Early in the morning by Kileen Gilroy |
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CONTENTS
1 - BIOGRAPHY
2 – POETRY
How to Lie
I just want to be enough for you,
Feeding Her Mother Grapefruit
Early in the morningBattle Scars
PeakingOne Hundred and Two Years Later
Potatoes
The Painter
The Names Of All Who Watch
3 - AFTERWORD
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1 – BIOGRAPHY: Kileen Gilroy
Kileen Gilroy is an aspiring poet currently residing in Narrgansett, Rhode Island. She has recently graduated Eastern Connecticut State University with a Secondary English Education degree with a minor writing concentration. She has also been the chief literary editor of the university’s literary magazine Eastern Exposure. She has had previous work published in Eastern Exposure (1, 2, &3), The New Plains Review, Silkword 4, Nefarious Ballerina, The North Central Review, Imitation Fruit, and The World Voice Project: Inspiring a Conscience Signature. At 23 years of age, she is currently developing and finishing her own manuscript.
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2 - POETRY
How to Lie
I tried to forget
the late night prayers,
birthday wishes,
neck sweating,
heart racing,
raspy voice of a little girl begging God-
God, make it stop,
the things I’ve seen
and what I know,
which I do not want to believe-
the dried up white powder in her nose,
the dollar bill,
the Days Inn hotel room card,
the white cabinet,
the running inside to see her backside,
little girl shrinking away saying nothing-
ignoring slurred speech,
annoying babble about this and that,
about how great I am,
how lucky she is to have me,
she wants me to stay,
talk for a while longer,
but I just want to run away-
as I once did when we didn’t live here
but there,
when I didn’t know what it was,
when I knew how to close my eyes
lie under tree boughs looming,
letting in the little light left.
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I just want to be enough for you,
is what I want to say
each time I kiss the bridge of your nose.
You open my gates to lazy days
where sunbeams dance across
my chest like children often do,
skipping along sidewalks
where shadows collide with amber light.
You intrigue me
in the ways you can so easily unfold me,
make my insides grow quiet,
blooming in chrysanthemums when you are near.
I want to know the
ways of your streets,
where they might carry me,
but as much as I want to know,
doubt follows me
like a nameless girl who has just slept in your bed.
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Feeding Her Mother
Grapefruit
When I was too young to understand
My grandmother speaking to her mother in Polish,
I watched her sprinkle sugar
Onto the bitter heart of
a grapefruit
Stretching across the table to feed her
As the pink juices dribbled
Down her chin like rivers
carving into bedrock,
Where my grandmother scooped what's left
With a metal spoon.
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Early in the morning
When the sky is still shedding the last shadows of the night,
I hear her voice
Travel in and out of dreams
Like sunrays sneaking through shades
To touch the flowers rooted deep
Within my palms so they will bloom.
Before she knows I am awake
I creep to the stairs
Clutching the railing
Where I watch her mascara run
Like black rivers
Flowing through the heart of the earth.
Her mother has just died,
Uncertain of what to do,
I watch her
As she crashes before me,
Breaking like dawn.
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Battle Scars
"Sometimes I just want to go back to Iraq,"
He whispers when neither of us can sleep.
I dont know about him or where he is now,
But I know where my dreams go-
They are inside the breath of a little girl
Who wishes on dandelions
And blows the spores seven years away
Until one boy creeps deep inside her
As if into the heart of a maple tree
To count the rings and watch the sap
Ooze like the blood of the man
He can’t stop thinking about.
I know why he wants to go back,
It’s why I sleep with him,
It’s what we know.
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Peaking
He opens
my hands
like windows
where the dreams
I have been waiting for slip
through cracks,
slide inside
the curve of the crescent
moon to begin again.
He finds
places to fall
between as I sink
into his eyes.
Irises inside
burst from my ribs
as his fingers press
into the gardens
of who I might be.
I exhale light,
fill the walls with color,
spread my hands
wide like wings
leaving behind
a puddle of stars.
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Dedicated to Magdelena Swaja
Before we plant the Serviceberry tree to remind us
of my Polish great grandmother’s hair,
I imagine what the heart might look like,
layers of rings within this wood
like that of the boat
she almost died on.
When they went to throw her body overboard
on the way to New York,
a young Czechoslovakian voice stretched across
thick fog and the ship’s sturdy beams--
She’s not dead yet I will take care of her.
If it weren’t for that woman
to have heard her utter a single breath
and nurse her back to health with beer,
I wouldn’t be here
to plant the roots
and touch the little white
flowers budding from the branches.
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Potatoes
I don’t know my grandfather
Or his parents
Or the people who came before him.
All I know is that we share the same
Irish name and love for mashed potatoes.
On Thanksgiving I am reminded of this,
As my grandmother, his widow
Scrubs the rough skin
Peels the layers back;
I only knew my husband for ten years.
Sometimes when I can’t sleep at night,
I think of how my relatives might have lived in Ireland.
I wonder if they were happy,
If they ate salt herring in three bites
To see a future husband in a dream.
I wonder if they lit candles in windows
On the night after November 1st,
Loving the dead like she does,
Or if they were the ones
Digging until the sun fell into the earth,
In hopes to gather enough potatoes
To feed a family without
Getting lost in the shadows.
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The Painter
i.
When he leaves me to go paint the church
Down the street from his house,
I imagine how his hands might look,
Gripping the wooden brush
Dipping inside me like a jar of white paint,
Spreading in the motion of the sun.
ii.
The roads between us grow deeper
Where trees wrap around eachother,
Butterflies burst from the hollows
As something blooms inside me,
Like birds breaking free.
iii.
A year ago things were
differnet
When you didnt hold back.
I imagine gazing at the steeple,
How I might visit your church this summer to see
The sunlit caked panels
Already cracking and chipping
Away toward nothing.
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The Names Of All Who Watch
For the 9/11 Responders
His sleeplessness weighs heavy on my forehead,
his death almost nothing.[1]
It was autumn then,
the leaves suddenly flames,
the side walk burning cinders.[2]
There are days we live as if death
were nowhere in the background.[3]
Some old men are still alive,[4]
possessed by what we now no more possessed,[5]
haunted by the dead,
reburying their secrets in the bricks.[6]
I knew little,
and what I knew I did not believe.[7]
I recognize bravery when I see it,
the way it opens,
the way it enters itself,[8]
all of it going by in a blur,
a jar of ashes,
a jar of bones,[9]
a thousand postcards of a world
he dared not dream he dreamed,
signed with the names of all who watch.[10]
[1] Li Young Lee, My Father’s House
[2] Saul Williams, She
[3] Li Young Lee, From Blossoms
[4] Allen Ginsburg, Back on Times Square, Dreaming of Times Square
[5] Robert Frost, The Gift Outright
[6] Ghassan Zaqtan, Darkness
[7] Sharon Olds, First Sex
[8] Fleda Brown, For Bill, Injured in the First Dress Rehearsal
[9] Len Roberts, The Long Ride Home
[10] Jake Adam York, At Cornwall Furnace
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3 - Afterword
Email Poetry Kit -
info@poetrykit.org - if you would like
to tell us what you think. We are looking for other poets to feature in
this series, and are open to submissions. Please send one poem and a short
bio to - info@poetrykit.org
Thank you for taking the time to read Caught in the Net. Our other magazine s
are Transparent Words ands Poetry Kit Magazine, which are webzines on the Poetry Kit site and this can be found at -
http://www.poetrykit.org/