an instance of this

  |  December 9, 2016

Kitchen recast in mercury-
glass, tallow tapers, the last
purple-thorned artichoke.

A doe’s once-hide eminent
aghast a once-wide pine
plank floor. Skeletal,

a bat specters the ashed
domain of an exhausted
woodstove. Revenant,

we recenter our bones
in familiar chairs round
its tongueless roar.

In our before bed, we wool-
gather erstwhile walls with
reclaimed palettes: mourning

dove grays, pink-rinsed dawns,
eggshell blues. We bushwhack
through undergrowth, shear

spiderwebs, ghost our own
refractions. When it’s cold out,
we blend in with the snow.

This poem was creating during an event hosted by the Poetry Barn, called Writing the Res. This event was dedicated to the history of the Ashokan Resevoir, the towns and communities that were uprooted for ‘the greater good’. The Poetry Barn is a collaboration dedicated to poetry appreciation, the nurturing of new and experienced poets and the creation of art in the Hudson Valley.


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About Lissa Kiernan

Lissa Kiernan's first poetry collection Two Faint Lines in the Violet (Negative Capability Press, 2014) was a Foreword Reviews' INDIEFAB Book of the Year Award finalist, as well as a finalist for the Julie Suk Award for Best Poetry Book by an Independent Press. Kiernan holds an MFA in Poetry from Stonecoast at the University of Southern Maine, and an MA in Media Studies from The New School.  She is the founding director of Poetry Barn, a literary center in West Hurley New York, sponsoring workshops, readings, craft talks, and book arts for all ages. Her first book of prose, Glass Needles & Goose Quills: Elementary Lessons in Atomic Properties, Nuclear Families, and Radical Poetics (Haley’s), is forthcoming.

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