INTERIOR GARDEN + CRESCENT + TENDER PLACES
As example of such convolution I present the red velvet room in which I was rendered supine by the blue gladiolus of heaven looking down. The thick walls mark, window anchoring interior to the scarred vantage of the moon, and when its light shines through the garden glows in equal proportion to cut flowers sinking into vases. The wrought iron’s decorative but nevertheless the window is barred. The road to the right to the mountains. The road to the left to the sea. I have come to account by citing the primordial decision made in that unrecoverable moment of coming face to face just before the photograph was snapped, before the notion was born that these walls could never accurately divide the just from the unjust. Though I often find myself in such interiors and believe this finding to be unique, we all in some sense spend our lives circling around objects that are, if not physically, then metaphorically, constituted of red glass. The news of the day speeds toward the moment when, instead of continuing on, you will pause in solitude to touch tender places in the oak, knots grown through where branches had been.
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Read an interview with Karla at Open Loop Press.
New prose poems can be read in the current issue of Fence and in the online journal, Harp & Altar.
Also read work in the just-out NARWHAL, a compendium of 7 chapbooks by Karla Kelsey, Kazim Ali, Maureen Alsop, Sommer Browning, Kate Schapira, Jared White, and Laura Goode!
