December 10, 2024
Micrographic Design in the Shape of a Lovers Knot, Anonymous French or Flemish, from the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Purchase, Daniel Ergmann Gift, 2014.
I Notice You Look Like Your Father
A bell has been rung. I look
forward and fall over the cliff.
The work of ending has begun.
Hill, illusion. Eyes plucked. This is the way
God pretends our bodies are our lives.
Where is that metallic ringing from?
Winter bangs a pan while running
naked and mad in the greying streets.
My flaws, I think anything is romantic
In twos. Two’s like killer and killed
two’s like sea and sand and end times
and after the end, which is solitude.
The spotlight of my eye opens towards the sky
while I wait for you in bed. Buck, let’s die here
and call it square.
Leaves flutter in conversation
Yet, individually as if
strung up by separate winds.
Kai-Lilly Karpman has studied at the Iowa Writer’s Workshop and holds an MFA from Columbia University, where she also received a teaching fellowship. She has poems published in or forthcoming in Plume, The Rumpus, Image Magazine, Florida Review, and elsewhere. She can be reached at kkrpmn@gmail.com.