03-03-2021
Kai Coggin
The First Kiss I Don’t Count
it’s one I’ve never
written about
don’t count
or even consider legitimate
there were no
shooting stars
weak knees
or butterflies
his mouth
a stranger
dark
the taste of metal
blood maybe
sweat
smoke of swisher sweets
13
is an in between state
consciousness of a woman-too-soon
in the body
of a child
and
he was a stranger
who knocked on the door
and asked for a glass of water
and it was hot and it was July
and I let him inside
the house
his skin glistened like a night of stars
we sat on the couch
his name was Leroy
and he put my hands around
his hard flesh
and Gilligan’s Island was on TV
skipper the professor too
and see
it’s funny what memories do
remembers these flashes
but I can still taste
the mouth
of a stranger
and I tried to wash
the
blood
off my Winnie the Pooh bedsheets
and I ran the bathwater
over
my thighs
and something
something was broken
and it was hot and it was July
and I did not have a name for this
other
than
SIN
and I did not have a name for this
but this would be a silence
that would hold my tongue for years
and I don’t really ever count it
as my first kiss
because so much more was taken
and he was a stranger
and it was hot and it was July
and Gilligan’s Island was on TV
and I could not
stop crying
I just could not stop crying
the
bathwater
muffling
my loss
In Search of Salt
Butterflies
in the Amazon
drink the tears
of turtles.
This only happens
in the Amazon,
the butterflies
flutter by
in search of salt,
the turtles
oblige
with watering eyes,
open domes of sodium for the taking,
move slowly
across logs
tipped
to the mouths of rivers,
leathery wet skin dark shells
glisten in the amazon sun,
signal flash dinner bell
to floating color swarms, thirsty with need.
If you have never
seen a turtle wear a bright crown of flame
in orange and yellow butterflies,
you have perhaps
missed more in your life than you know.
There are miracles of nature
right outside your doorstep,
symbiotic relationships of hands being held
that might look like paws
or hooves,
or wings,
because nature has a way
of working together,
trees drop seeds
that feed the wild creature who
wanders the forest and squats to plant that seed
in new fertilized ground, steaming.
The beaver dams the stream
and the salmon gather by the wall
offering their cold-slick bodies
to the black bear hungry in spring.
And outside my window a cardinal sings,
bright red flight against green,
his metallic shrill
a song from the other worlds.
The seasons revolve around an axis
that pulls us all in,
we are closer than you think,
the oneness pulses
invisibly
and you could hear it if you tried,
you could feel it in the movement of the air connecting us,
our breath all mingling in this unseen space,
I breathe you in,
and you, me,
you me we,
if you watch for the migration of hummingbirds,
if you stay silent when the wolf howls his vibration to the fields of night,
and if you simply opened your eyes
like the turtles…
you would see.
If I knew a butterfly needed my salt
in order to produce an egg,
in order to create another colorful airy winged being,
I would sit outside
and think of
all the saddest things,
or perhaps stare directly at the sun,
until I could nourish
every thirsty thing with my tears,
my face
an open flower,
my heart
the nectar I offer back to the earth.
Landslide
sometimes
a mountaintop
misses the sea so much
she dives into the blue kiss dark abyss
without even holding her
breath
landslides are this wanting
this gravity
and reforming
and falling
in
love
reshaping the land
to join mountaintop with sea
my darling… landslide into me
-from Incandescent (Sibling Rivalry Press 2019) selected by Andrew McFadyen-Ketchum
Kai Coggin is the author of three full-length poetry collections PERISCOPE HEART (Swimming with Elephants 2014), WINGSPAN (Golden Dragonfly Press 2016), and INCANDESCENT (Sibling Rivalry Press 2019), as well as a spoken word album SILHOUETTE (2017). She is a queer woman of color who thinks Black lives matter, a teaching artist in poetry with the Arkansas Arts Council, and the host of the longest running consecutive weekly open mic series in the country—Wednesday Night Poetry. Recently named “Best Poet in Arkansas” by the Arkansas Times, her fierce and powerful poetry has been nominated three times for The Pushcart Prize, as well as Bettering American Poetry 2015, and Best of the Net 2016 and 2018. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Cultural Weekly, Entropy, NELLE, Sinister Wisdom, Calamus Journal, Lavender Review, Luna Luna, Blue Heron Review, Yes, Poetry and elsewhere. Coggin is Associate Editor at The Rise Up Review. She lives with her wife and their two adorable dogs in the valley of a small mountain in Hot Springs National Park, Arkansas.
