Poetry / Kale Hensley
:: Ugh, I’m So Over Hope ::
In true leap-frog fashion, I’m playing games with abandon, forsaking all emotion in the vein of Stoic men; their arduous practice of looking constipated. I’m tired of your very look, hope, how my mouth must make this embarrassing shape as if I’m swallowing a snake only to pop off at the tail—no more of you, feathered thing pious in the soul, why not thrust your beak in utter unmeek out one of my many holes! Be worth something, be useful! Fallen fat, you have, from the breast of expect! I miss when the world birthed older magics, twists, and regrets; no more of this hope nonsense—I’d rather be jealous: skin threaded in passion, leaping on stilts to curse the Earth’s unjust tilt toward those who’ve used talents for greed bedazzled bloodspill. How does it feel? Yes, knowing your name is spelt in red, knowing you are the muteness and the blindness who begat this help- lessness, I’m asking you, hesitant resilience, bowed head before the storm, do more. Pluck the eye out of the hurricane. Grab the tornado’s pointed tail. No longer shall I wait for you; tonight I make hell.
:: The Etymology of Harmony ::
Let us begin with a pitch of riling, of meddlesome: a noise beguiling, that behaves as uncombed hair— a most darling snare, crying blood-precious, which asks to be caught despite the hot chance of a brand down to the bone, kneading alabaster roads as if succubus, as if warranted, begged for from a star as pollution personal, or god-sent demon, its first note erotic, punctures the fabric of darkness to carve words as if it only knew the heart as tomb, as clay, malleable enough for its biblical play, recall that net of dance cast over David? The awe that choked the name of Saul? It is the music that makes the man, isn’t it? The oldest spirit in strokes, vibrant: oh festering flesh, oh blushing dissonance, let me slip between your lips.
From the writer
:: Account ::
I don’t want to be one of those people, but my work is so lyrical that, oftentimes, it feels as though the poem writes itself. I’m less interested in narrative than in permitting the imagination to enact its wild associations. Sound becomes a device through which we access startling images and unexpected comparisons. It’s strange to expect a poem to tell a story; better to expect it to walk you through a room of silk, or to thrust you onto the back of some strange creature and ask you to fend for yourself.
Many of these poems were written while I was on my honeymoon in the Highlands. The sites and scenes echoed eerily with memories from my girlhood, and so first lines would arise as I walked, bought coffee, or browsed for a souvenir. The poems come to me through motion and emotion; once I finally sit down to compose, the remaining notes tend to arrive within an hour or so. Truthfully, my process is as simple as listening. It helps if there’s a proficient accordion player in the background too. Maybe even a dram of whiskey.
Kale Hensley is a poet and visual artist from West Virginia. Her work appears in Gulf Coast, Booth, Evergreen Review, and Epiphany: A literary magazine. She lives in Texas with her wife and a menagerie of clingy pets. Find more of her writing at kalehens.com.