Poems by A.N. Kuhlman

I am finished with us.
           with this.
Your lamentable, self-righteous sympathy.
        I will show you
                           pity.
I will teach you to pity me.

I have grown tired of this,
           of this.
This deluded idea you have
of the permanent and cursed hold
          you have on me.
For I will show you
               how tight your grip
proves to be.
            I’ll slip through your fingers,
            morph once again
            until the girl you think you’ve trapped
is no more than an idea,
a notion you thought up one day.
Your loss is,
         it’s the wrong one.  I’m stronger
than the simpering selfless girl you’ve made me.

I have risen
         above you.
Your charm, mystical intrigue.
         I can see you,
                       stripped of them
I’m the one
       who dressed you.

A.N. Kuhlman

Burned by the sun,
   dry and crisp, bleached as gold
       as it once was green.
the corn is ready for sacrifice
    yielding itself to the harvest.
Flat vistas of stale gold,
     wind calling ghosts
          as it wails through the husk.
These wastelands roll on
     punctured by windbreaks.
Evergreens so old, no one remembers
     who planted them.
They shelter these silicone houses
     with additions and hot tubs,
     watching over the shells of homesteads, too,
          as vandals hack out old banisters and doorframes.
This rural autumn does not shelter;
        There are flashes of orange among the groves
               and rifle shots echo in the creek.

A.N. Kuhlman

A poem about the fall in the springtime, but I was thinking about home.

(a sestina)

I’ll yield to the whispered arch of song,

the sickening, quickening, dark

spectre.  This firm grip of sweet

senselessness offers no absolution

or condemnation, still it slips

through the fingers that dare to grasp at light.

The season deepens, and with it lightens

my hold on lids which open legions of unsung

angels.  The taut silence slipped

past and waits in the gathering darkness

to be reclaimed, while I go to absolve

past wrongs and rites that linger in lost sweetness.

My cracked shell of the sweet

girl lies bathed in lightness,

misplaced in the folly of absolving

the shrill, grating song

of an oft-told tale.  Such excuses fail darkly

when on truth we’ve stumbled, and slipped

into the caverns of a world more slippery

than one’s thought.  This pale doll’s face contains the sweet

deception that crawls and claws through darkening

trust, and finally fails to satisfy.  Lighter,

then, this mantle of belief, it resists the songs

that would convince, it knows now there are no absolutes.

So I throw back this insipid absolution

that will not be given or taken, or slipped

through a door in the night.  I’ve sung

the defense, whispered of the sweet

carelessness left behind with the light.

I’ve been swathed in a cold, proud dark.

I’ll face the swirling tempest of blame, the darkening

twilight of the unabsolved.

The grey morning waits with only slate light

to give.  A sparkling dawn has slipped

through fingers that grasped at sweetness,

leaving a requiem to sing.

I left the walls singing, begging for dark,

a quiet absolution, sweetness that would not cloy.

Enlightened, a slip of deception my despair.

A.N. Kuhlman

I.

I have never been to Chinatown.
I have never been south of Roosevelt.
Forget this, let’s just go,
buy bootleg DVDs with subtitles
     you can’t get rid of,
and counterfeit Chloe bags,
     whose zippers don’t work,
     but look just like the real thing.
It’s still dark though.  The shops
aren’t open this early, only purveyors
     of other counterfeit things.
I didn’t know Michigan Avenue was still
  Michigan this far down.

II.

Brown paper,
   crisp, pristine, concealing intentions.
It could be any prescription.
I woke up too early,
     and came to
     too late.
There is a sort of snap,
     a string breaking
     that can never be restrung.

III.

Blood blooms in water
like a flower,
     like poppies,
     marking an unmarked grave.

come home my love-
these walls aren’t mine
   unless you inhabit them,
   as you inhabit me.

the sheets are salty
with last night’s sweat
    and today’s tears.
they smell of smoke
and your cologne.
I try to count
the five hundred threads
but keep getting lost,
the pattern always makes my eyes
lose focus.

If we had lived
in Tudor England,
  you would have cut off my head
    years ago.
I am not very good at housewifery,
   and played you like a fool.
I came home
   with someone’s lips
   still hot on my skin,
       and you were none the wiser.
I lied and lied
   and called up false tears when needed,
   you licked up every drop,
       the way a beaten dog
       still defends his master.
I sneered at your loyalty,
I abhor your predictability,
    the way I could still have you back,
    if I wanted.
So perhaps I would have kept my head,
    and you would wander the court,
    cuckolded and devoted still.

A.N. Kuhlman, 2010

It’s a dense misty day in Chicago.  Days like this, I don’t want to go anywhere or do anything.  I just want to curl up with a book and some tea and not resurface.  But I have to work later, so soon I have to unwrap myself from my blanket, detach myself from the couch and put on clothes and my face, and let the foggy city see me.  Chicago is a city that sometimes just feels dark.  It can be unbelievably bright and sunny sometimes, but those days never seem real.  Days like this, with loud sirens and car horns carried on the fog seem to suit it better.

It’s because of you
    I can never finish what I start.
    Abandonment runs in my veins
    next to the blood
    that comes from you,
        the seeds you planted.

Remember how long it took
    for you to rebuild my closet?
       You tear things up just fine,
       but then can’t be bothered
          to put them back together.

It’s because of you
    I get so angry I can hardly speak.
    This temper of ours
        runs cold and quiet
        though we can scream
        just as well.

Remember how red your face gets?
    when your jaw is clenched,
    and the chin you gave me quivers.
    You never stayed
         to see the wreckage of your rage.