2 poems by Katrina Kaye

Wintertime

The chill of the months 
are known to stagnate
feet and freeze fingers.
Anticipate the cold and lonesome.
Pain clenches fists
in a grotesque coil.
It knows where to find you.
But here is not where it ends.
Come May the sun will
lighten chestnut locks
and brown the pale skin of under arm.
If you are lucky, and I know
you are, you will be able
to watch sunrise over ocean
and know this world will continue.
As the earth spins,
You are a child twirling
in the sunlight until your
knees give out.
Look toward the sea and sunshine.
I know not everyone will see it,
but you will. It will return.
For right now,
listen,
The crash of waves,
the curl of toes against sand,
sunlight reflected in unkempt hair.
they are here
only for you.


Wild

Our hunger was
never so animal
as it was on
the Cold Moon,
never so bloody
as the first
of the month. 
We salivated;
the slick of the bone,
the cut of tooth
on tenderloin.
Counted pulse beats
and tick of time,
dripped words
like weapons.
In a hurry,
panting and
pacing, a dog,
not of war,
but of conquest,
of revolution.
By winter we
didn’t have enough
meat on our bones
to gnaw against our gums.
We never really
learned how
to survive
off of more than
each other,
to scavenge feathers
falling soundless,
the ruffle of the lost.
It was our isolation
that buried white teeth
deep in the earth.

---

Katrina Kaye is a writer and educator living in Albuquerque, NM. She is seeking an audience for her ever-growing surplus of poetic meanderings. She hoards her published writing on her website: ironandsulfur.com. She is grateful to anyone who reads her work and in awe of those willing to share it.