April 22: Birthday of Charles Mingus and Louise Glück
“writing is a kind of revenge against circumstance” –Louise Glück
Days bop along
atop
each other
like ragtag treetops
or like
highway-side house fence-lines—
one chainlink,
one grey wood slats or brown,
leaning leaning leftwise down toward moss—
so what if there’s an iris
here
or there a daffodil,
I still slump to the linoleum floor
in a fleamarket antiques store
and moan aloud
what were all these iron tools for
and pie birds and
beaded evening bags—
afterlives heaped
on nicked oak tables
to be combed through
when it rains out.
A lifetime Ohioan, Kerry Trautman’s (Twitter: @ohiokerry) poetry and short fiction have appeared in various journals, including Slippery Elm, Free State Review, The Fourth River, Midwestern Gothic, and Gasconade Review. Her work has also appeared in anthologies such as Mourning Sickness (Omniarts 2008), Journey to Crone (Chuffed Buff Books 2013,) Delirious: A Poetic Celebration of Prince (NightBallet Press, 2016,) and Resurrection of a Sunflower (Pski’s Porch Press, 2017.) In 2020, her one-act play “Mass” was selected for production as a staged reading through The Toledo Repertoire Theater’s “Toledo Voices” competition. Kerry’s poetry books are Things That Come in Boxes (King Craft Press 2012,) To Have Hoped (Finishing Line Press 2015,) Artifacts (NightBallet Press 2017,) and To be Nonchalantly Alive (Kelsay Books 2020.)
