Off in those days of furniture forts
Curled under upended armchairs or
Broom handles stuck in the lawn
Draped with blankets with you it was always this
Architecture
As your fears take over we try to
Talk it out
Tease some sense from a new game
Cereal, mug, toast
Food become building material you
Push it more than eat the
Pills you take or bury in the mashed potato when
No one is looking the arguments
About baths
About dreams that have become for you so
Vivid about your cold cold hands about the dinner you
Cooked it years ago but can smell that soup and
Yearn
Yearn for it, I’m
Learning to overcook to use
Handfuls of black pepper a
Spell to summon that familiar raven’s eye that
Smile that says you knew I was teasing you.
Copyright © Kim Shuck. All rights reserved.
Kim Shuck is a writer, visual artist, curator, frustrated mom and recovering sarcastic. She holds an MFA in Fine Arts from San Francisco State University. Her first solo book of poetry, Smuggling Cherokee, was published by Greenfield Review press in 2005 and won the Diane Decorah Award from the Native Writers Circle of the Americas. Recent work has been included in the anthologies New Poets of the American West and I Was Indian. In June 2010 Kim had a month long co-residency at the de Young Museum in San Francisco. Visit her on the web at www.kimshuck.com
