Karen Poppy

Vultures
Ribs' arched 
Smile, lavish
Flower, sweet
Swarm over.
Sun's heat,
Surge of scent.
Death does not
Relent, expands
Pungent.
Almost silent,
These birds sing
Spring's thaw.
Inner flesh, each
Beak's honed gnaw.
Red curtains opening.






Patterns
My mom thinks her childhood dog
Ran away because she petted him
As he ate. My mom thinks she
Called her grandmother to take her 
In because her soon-to-be stepfather
Beat her. Picked up the phone at age
Three, called and arranged for her
Grandmother to save her. My mom
Thinks her mother did not give her
Away, did not choose an unhinged,
Violent man over her own daughter. 
My mom thinks it better to stay
With my father for the children.
My mom thinks she did not choose
An unhinged, violent man over 
Her own daughter. My mom pets
My hair and confides in me as she
Feeds me. I am too young to understand
Until I grow up and she continues
To tell the same stories, confides
In me like a friend. My mom
Thinks my grandmother took me in
Out of favoritism, not because I ran
Away. My grandmother saved my life.
She also gave me a quilt, its overlapping 
Patterns I still see when I close my eyes.

Recipe for Clearing Love Disasters
Ladle scum off top.
Reveal nourishing soup
Filled with root vegetables,
Fortifying broth. Steaming
With strength and possibility.
Feed to someone worthy. Yourself.



With Our Loneliness Glistening, Like That Live-Oak Tree, Like Your Beloved River, Singing
Walt Whitman, what is it?
You, with butterflies in your beard,
With saltwater in your beard
From the brackish, bidirectional waters
Of the River Hudson. Loneliness.
I am lonely too, despite this interconnection.
My hair dries in the sunshine as I write,
As I move my pen across your reflection.
They would rather read me than know me.
They would rather this than my hair done pretty.
We cannot help but wonder at the river's direction—
You under, me over. The spiderweb showing 
Busy intricacies. Eccentric, the river making
Its own web of waves and eddies. We flow.
There is so much to know between you and me.
That old, gnarled trunk, that smooth face, that eye.
Federico, he knew you too—and what did he come to know?
Afloat in that jasmine-scented boat to eternity.
What is there to see? I'll wait here some more.
I'm not ready for those shimmering waves, however heavenly.
Like you, I am lonely. I said this before. I, under a tree, on shore.
As a child, I picked blades of grass, watched the ants
In single file do their soldiers' work, wished them no injury.
Now I cross back to your time, soldiers, young men and boys.
Our nation at civil war: startled and trenched. Division is lonely.
You were a friend, a nurse, a confidant.
The bedpan glinting like a fish. Cool cloth
To wipe down brow and remaining limbs.
What war does to us. Peace, even more alone.
Then we sit in the tree's uneven shade
And wonder why. My hair's all dry
With salt and sun. The shade can't cover me.
Tree's assortment of shadows bewilders me,
It alone, and I lonely, inadequate in its inadequate shade.
A blue sky free from cloud is no less lonely.
We have all lived under the same shade, the same sky.
That is why we can call on each other, to say,
“Hey, you there, are you lonely like me?”
Even when joyous, reunited with a friend a lover,
We know the answer, dear Walt, New York or Louisiana.
			Or—here, I'll admit it—in California.