{"id":5587,"date":"2019-03-16T12:40:14","date_gmt":"2019-03-16T12:40:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/?p=5587"},"modified":"2019-11-23T00:28:51","modified_gmt":"2019-11-23T00:28:51","slug":"two-poems-kelli-stevens-kane","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/?p=5587","title":{"rendered":"THREE POEMS – Kelli Stevens Kane"},"content":{"rendered":"

EXPOSURE<\/strong><\/p>\n

     for Alex Honnold, 2011<\/em><\/p>\n

You say finger locking feels very exposed.    I’ll never know how
\nmy body feels relying on skill to live, or       do we all know how it feels
\nAlex? At any altitude the heart could stop,           lungs could collapse.
\nI don’t mean what you’re doing isn’t dangerous,   I just mean I understand
\nwhy you do it. Living in a van so you can climb    all the time is some kind of
\ncousin to riding 11 hours on a bus to read one     poem, then riding 11 hours
\nback home. I’m not even sure what home is   anymore. I don’t think it’s your
\nvan that smells like socks and underarms or     the bus with its freezing
\nair climbing up the headboard of my dirty       window, a pair of pants
\nfor my pillow. It’s not in front of the cameras   that follow you up Half Dome
\nor in the spotlight on the stage I read from.      It’s not your mother’s house,
\nwhere you leave most of your clothes, or my      house whose woodwork
\nmade me cry when I first walked in. You and I       both know, some
\nthings just have to be done. And whatever that is,     we call it home.
\nI take a pen, lock my fingers around it, and            it feels very exposed.
\nSometimes every muscle aches from this         exposure and sometimes
\nI ache from failure to expose anything.         Either way, the poems
\ndon’t give a damn about me, the rocks you       climb don’t care
\nabout you either, and it doesn’t even matter.        I can’t stop writing
\nany more than you can stop climbing. They say     poets die first. One day
\nneither of us will be here. All that will matter is    that we did what we came
\nhere to do, even if everything and everyone else in    our lives, including  ourselves,
\ncame in second. Some say you’re selfish, others say     no, you’d be selfish if
\nyou had a wife and kids. What would they say about      me? Filthy house, no
\ndinner on the table, I moved back here to be closer to     family and now I don’t even
\nvisit them. No rope, this wife and mother’s version of free   solo. I’ve jammed
\nmy whole life into these poems, so if I fall first, remind     them to bury
\nme in words. And if you fall first, we already know    in stone.
\n <\/p>\n

\n

 
\nPAUSE<\/em><\/strong>
\n 
\nAs if my body doesn’t know
\nmy body. As if abnormal equals
\nillness. As if I could be sick
\nand not know. As if, as if,
\nas if the womb is not a heart,
\nas if the heart wouldn’t cry,
\nas if this should be a time of action
\ninstead of reflection. As I begin
\nmy fourth month of bleeding,
\nunderstand–we are
\nhaving our last conversation, we
\nhave loved each other deeply. I
\nam healthy. This is healthy. You
\nwill not scrape away a pure thing.
\n <\/p>\n

\n

 
\nREFRAIN
\n 
\nIrrelevant swelling. Ignore
\nankle. Injury
\nis illusion. Resume movement.
\n 
\n 
\n\"\"Kelli Stevens Kane is a poet, playwright, and oral historian. She’s a Cave Canem Fellow and an August Wilson Center Fellow, and has received Advancing Black Arts in Pittsburgh grants from The Pittsburgh Foundation. She’s studied at VONA, Hurston\/Wright, and Callaloo. She’s read her poetry and oral history, and performed her one woman show, BIG GEORGE, nationally. Her work is published in North American Review, Little Patuxent Review, Split This Rock, Under a Warm Green Linden, Painted Bride Quarterly,<\/em> and African Voices<\/em>. For more information, visit kellistevenskane.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

EXPOSURE      for Alex Honnold, 2011 You say finger locking feels very exposed.    I’ll never know how my body feels relying on skill to live, or       do we all know how it feels Alex? At any altitude the heart could stop,           lungs could collapse. I don’t mean [&hellip<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2552,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[321],"class_list":["post-5587","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-poetry","tag-art-by-sophie-sanders"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5587","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5587"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5587\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6032,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5587\/revisions\/6032"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2552"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5587"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5587"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}