kris t kahn: two poems

The Broken Bedframe | Sybilline

The Broken Bedframe

The broken bedframe
was patched quite easily with
plywood and nails though

you kept it standing propped
against the wall, marveling, prolonging
the task, driving each nail in

as though it were a crucifixion.
I witnessed it all from
the doorway, where at least

there was some distance
between it and I, between the symbol
and the logical progression

of memory, however ephemeral.
I might have been at the mouth of a tomb.
I might have been remembering Hesiod

and his poetics of labor while
I watched your hands at work,
watched you pounding and sweating

and I stopped then. I thought to myself:
This is how the damage was done.
This is how our love collapsed,

from all of this man-power,
from all of these things you felt
you needed so desperately to prove.

Sybilline

In the hollow of my hand
where the lines criss-cross
there are grooves and stories,
there are pockmarks in which
you might hide—

True, I cannot disguise or mask
the season. I cannot feign
snow while the trees boom
with blossoms, spraying the air
with their noxious earthly odors.

I can offer you only this palm,
this small cave where the pages
I've stashed have not yet
been found, have not yet been burned
by that horrid pathetic Tarquin;

where there are still stories
available to tell you so as to ward off
these fears of yours: fears of
the changing season and
what it will change within you.

Poet's Biography:

kris t kahn's poetry has appeared in numerous publications including The Cortland Review, Samsara Quarterly, The Pedestal Magazine, 2River, Stirring, The Absinthe Literary Review, and many others. Author of two chapbooks—The Gospel According to Thomas and for a ghost—kris' first full-length collection, Arguing With the Troubadour, was recently released and can be purchased here. Editor of the online journal Sometimes City, kris lives in New Jersey. His personal site can be found at http://analecta.net/blackswan/