GAS Featured Poet: Kathleen Hellen

 

Featured on Poetry Daily and Verse Daily, Kathleen Hellen’s work has been nominated multiple times for Best of the Net and the Pushcart. She is the recipient of the James Still Award, the Thomas Merton prize for Poetry of the Sacred, and poetry prizes from the H.O.W. Journal and Washington Square Review. Hellen is the author of three full-length poetry collections, including Meet Me at the Bottom, The Only Country Was the Color of My Skin, and Umberto’s Night, which won the poetry prize from Washington Writers’ Publishing House, and two chapbooks.

… a second’s delay

“They make a desert and call it peace.”—Tacitus

  

sunlight bleaches barricade. buildings in the empty 

streets appear like chalk in frame,

a man in Arabic, explaining, 

the voiceover, translating

they shoot at legs … 

the annexed lands creating barriers: failure

of contradictory interpretations. failure 

(with accusations) 

… rat-tat-tat-tat as natural

sound as sorry, the reporter says, slipping 

dangerously close to engagement … failure,

a beggar 

walking away from the table.

 

little capitalists

  

Who grind your dreams like an Arabica, pull up your pants, step outside each morning when the birds are interfering with the playlist, the rumble of the world like a hunger—you, who charge your dreams like an electric 

vehicle. file reports. handle claims. take the temperatures. who stuff your lungs with the exhaust of Chinese markets, avoiding detours flagged by migrants. who point your snout toward truffles e.g 5G eg. sick leave. bend your knee to shadows asking for the rent. the interest on the loan. the next installment. who buy into the ads that subtract you. 

On the bookshelf where the weight has bent my thoughts, the gloomy ghost of Marx looks down, a paperback.

hallucinating the end of the world 

 

the grass is buttoned with explosives

toadstools—in trinities of clover

 

mock portobellos, slippery juliets

in their caps, the glut of mucus 

 

tricksters, pretending to be oysters

champagne sponges swamping poisons 

 

shamans, conjuring in pyramids of mud 

sleeping deities, sprouting each 

a universe, then annihilating.