Herr

4X2

an online poetry journal

Photo by Melissa Hotchkiss

  • Repetition ritual for summoning the good witch

    by KT Herr

              On a large screen I watch ice-
                                  fisted hail shatter a windshield. Something about storm
                                            footage gets the beams of my body
    hot. Thrumming. Like they could lift
                                  & land in some swifter place. Later, a real storm

         tramples Florida. The air conditioner
                                  exhales to a halt, then clears
              its throat coming back on. Between its purrs & gurgles
                                                                               I’m itching for a pattern

         I can touch. I twist the blinds closed
                           & open again. Fingers of my left hand calloused
                                from someone else’s chords. Think: I must be waiting
                                                    for a sign. Something about joy

              makes me foolish, lets me believe in nonsense
                                                            like destiny. Diet pills. Stimulus
                                                  packages. I go & go

         out into summer’s wet
                 pulse, where geckos can’t quiet
                                                  their ode. I return & return. Songs earned
                                           & thieved dwell in my hands, my throat; then scatter
              like leaves to line the walk. Something…
                                                    maybe when in the act of opening

               my door I pause, expecting a cat
    who’s not there to badger out. A sign of what? I made story
                                                    from dream, brought love’s stink
                                                                                                like a bad witch
                                                                   with me in the gale. The cat

               is back in Michigan. Maybe he sleeps
                                                    on top of her. The symphony of frogs
                                         will not abate. Diligent spiders try & try
                                    to dress me in their silks. Night is a feast
         of blood aloft on tiny wings, & she is
                                      eaten from me. Before I ever

                       fell in love, I wrote a song
                                                   whose chorus went: come out, come out,
                                   wherever you are. I was channeling

         the good witch. I need her pink
                                             benevolence; her snow, chilling my heavy-
                             lidded poppies. I trim
                                             my nails, clunk sodden heels, wonder if I’m
                                                                                      awake. Wonder which fold to pinch
                                                      to send this body home.

Poet's Statement: This poem arrived last summer during a residency at the Atlantic Center for the Arts. Cornelius Eady, our mentoring artist, urged us to consider collaboration, hybridity, overlap, and poetry-as-song. I was falling in love while also, still, for a long time, out of love. My body hadn’t spoken to me for a while and I struggled to listen. The air; the insects; the storm-thrashed foliage; the Oz-like dreaminess of the Florida bush all collaborated in a sort of attempted translation. Then I translated their translation into this poem.

Bio: KT Herr (she/her) is a queer poet, songwriter, and curious person whose poetry is published or forthcoming in Frontier, Quarter After Eight, Dream Pop, and others. She currently lives in Oak Bluffs, MA, where she teaches remote poetry classes, flirts with neighborhood skunks, and regularly sharpens her kitchen knives.