WHAT’S UNSAID

What’s said is bandied back and forth
playfully, affectionately, between us,
old familiars backsliding towards a faded
intimacy, which I, with a pang, realize I,
running fast, never adequately mourned.

What’s unsaid is so far underwater that
it cohabits with the blind fish who live
in the deepest ocean trenches near silvery,
scalding heat vents, and who’ve never
seen light, nor has anything else ever

seen them.  I talk about them never, and
never thought to broach the topic with you.
They are like disturbing, unintentional,
dyskinetic gestures certain patients make
to enable speech; airy, hatcheted arabesques,

or a language only the oldest grandmother
in the remote island tribe still speaks.

SAD SONG POEM

I wanted to make a poem that does what a sad, thrillingly beautiful song does: humbles you, makes you grateful for the huge and divine thing that you’ve been able to walk beside for brief periods in this life, crying down the back of your throat until you pipe up for the last few bars, though your voice snags, pulls clear, snags again on the blackberry canes you seem to be marching through.

Wanted to write a poem which does what seeing Picasso’s 1896 First Communion canvas did to me: arrested, stunned me, made me feel alive in a way that nothing ever quite had before, as if I’d been stalking a big, muscular cat who’d been decimating my people for decades, and which I see now padding down a ravine just below me.  My arrow’s notched; she hasn’t yet caught my scent.

A poem that makes me laugh so hard that I slowly rewind it, surprised at every line by doubled readings, doubled dopamine releases, slight but palpable rewards for taking it apart and reassembling it, but with different stresses, different breathing, a different musical score.  Still funny, I thought, but with Skeleton’s back-porch rocker creaking on, patient and low, after all of the spoken words have marched past.

A piece that pierces you in the first line:  my first love slagging me publicly in the 6th grade schoolyard, and me crying bitter tears all weekend until my mother opened the basement door and threatened to brain me, for Chrissakes! Then, a day later, I stepped on a stubbed 2×4 in a vacant lot, and an 8-penny nail went through my left tennis shoe and forefoot, and I saw stars. I can still feel it now when I stand and twist on it right.

A few steps out the door, frost, crescent moon, stars. You’d forgotten about night, bitter, brittle, breathy. Its vastness; its size.

SOLSTICE

                           Malcolm Kent (1954-2023)

Now, buttery daylight so long
you can barely shim in a dream-stuffed
drop of sleep.  The estuary, brimming at sunup,
is ebbing by lunch, its long belly effer-

vescing.  Above, clouds couple,
massive shadows tiptoe overland, dim
the flood’s pixel fringe, its skyside now stippled:
staccato keyboard flourishes spun from

the risen wind’s stinging lash.
Is it possible that I will never, in this life
pause wonderstsruck by your lovely, unforced grace
again?  Now something like turpentine’s

pumped thru my heart every
kick-drummed second.  No one smiles
or sings.  No one squats down to help me push.

Recent Blog Post

I’ve got you under my skin was the co-winner of the 2024 Marvin Bell Poetry Prize from December magazine

Click to learn more about Timothy Kelly’s books!

Check out these great songs!

By Timothy Kelly and Jim Miraldi