Kyle Laws

First Poetry
after “Poetry,” Pablo Neruda

Poetry arrives down a winding Fulling Mill Road
past the airport and before the field where Mother
has us cut October stalks of corn before the farmer
ploughs down the road at the edge of the field                                 
to warn us we are not supposed to be there with
stalks in our hands. Mother has an excuse I cannot
remember, but she fights back as though it was
her field, not just her idea for stalks to be next
to the door when we leave for Father Sheldon’s
haunted house where he gives painting lessons
that Mother takes. I remember her grey-blue oil
of the winter bay more than her reply to the farmer.

Fort Apache has not yet been built at the end
of Fulling Mill Road where it meets Route 47
into Rio Grande where the train runs from
Philadelphia and then the road continues past
the marshes where the fish factory reminds us
that we live on the sea and some of its catch
stays in the clouds that gather over the plant.
Fort Apache has a saloon where dancers kick
a kind of can-can while we stand on the tables
when it floods from a flash storm coming in
off the bay, not the damage I remember most
but the threat the sea possesses. 

riddled with arrows, fire and flowers                                                        
“Poetry,” Pablo Neruda

Only when day breaks
to night that arrows fly.
Fire scars the sky and flowers
get ready to bloom tomorrow.

Fire of hydrangeas
appears suddenly
the burst of blue
when you would expect pink.

Blue the color of warm sea
pink the rush of sun into waves
as the day ends
what you expect of night.

The day riddled with stars
the night riddled with sky
how to tell them that each
the opposite of what it should be.

I rest with a day’s journey
party with the night’s hips
Too much fire as one
becomes another.

Too much expectation
in what comes next.

Winter                                                                                                           

January days blue. A river from the street. Violent
fires before February that remain red after it closes.
Month of my birthday between Lincoln and
Valentine that happened on a Friday after Kay and
her mother hightailed to the hospital. Kay bent over.
She has epilepsy. She has taken her pills. Her mother
reminded her.

A stone thrown at a bird. A stranger will break you.
A gentleman stops on the side of the road and offers
help. They get in the back seat. Neither of them gives
that detail. He sits in the waiting room even though
they do not ask. A daughter is born around three. The
husband arrives after work. He meets the stranger.
The husband frightens.

How can desire fail? Waiting for him in the room
where the stranger waits. The stranger sits as ordinary
as anyone else. The husband wants his suit patched,
but it’s not. Loose tie the only dishevelment. A cup
of coffee in his hand, no cream. The husband waits on
him at the gas station where he works in the evening,
after the ball bearing factory. Desire has competition.

Kyle Laws is based out of Steel City Art Works in Pueblo, CO where she directs the Pueblo Poetry Project. Her collections include Alchemy of Rooms (Osage Arts Community Press, 2024), Beginning at the Stone Corner (River Dog, 2022), The Sea Is Woman (Moonstone Press, 2021), Uncorseted (Kung Fu Treachery Press, 2020), Ride the Pink Horse (Stubborn Mule Press, 2019), Faces of Fishing Creek (Middle Creek Publishing, 2018), and Wildwood (Lummox Press, 2014). With nine nominations for a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net, her poems and essays have appeared in magazines and anthologies in the U.S., Canada, and Europe.