Three Poems from “Either She Was”
By Karin Randolph
Upstate
It was the year of the lake. Mother suggested
little finger lakes, taught me how to dive crisply
into one without making a mess of the others.
Then the family lake where you’re all lined up.
Then the house closing in, creaks and fissures
and the shudder of bottom. I read the same
old tattered comic book, mumbled a prayer I
swore I’d never get caught mumbling. A god who
loved rafts that automatically inflate. One lake a
vast sloppy blue. To love the hiss of oxygen in
your head.
Warren
This little pastel rabbit is a symbol of a
trial ending in levitation, a model for our inner
city project. That big Easter bunny must have
contained a man, muffled, overheated, who
didn’t necessarily love babies, not to mention
bad air. I scream in his furry arms, you can see
interconnected tunnels for quick egress. Art
projects in the basement with pulleys, trapdoors.
One of our pale Houdinis rose from defunct to
repair the dissolute mechanism. And now how
about a big hand for my hardworking crossbow!
Long Long Ago
I study the old masters, one mud puddle
mysterious as Titan (not Titian). Funny how
this warm yellow looks ice cold. That’s a moon
for you. Now that she’s dying she’s sneaky,
slipping into my curled nap, coat too tight at the
door, red smile, purse like Queen Elizabeth II.
The room fills with her lungs. Someone let the
canary loose. The amphitheater with a little dim
drama. I’m navigating slowly with both ears, wet
slapping at the steps.
Karin Randolph is an ex-painter turned writer. She has had one-person shows of her paintings in Chicago, New York, and Germany. She was founder and editor of the poetry journal, Mind The Gap, which featured British and American poetry. Most recently, she was a finalist in the 2007 National Poetry Series. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband.