Selected Poems

by Caroline Kenworthy

Academy Alum, Class of 2011

Vienna, Austria

after Jean Valentine

The Lipizzaner horses practice cantering and
you speak English to me quietly.

The prints the raindrops leave, leave. At night,
at times, I hear your blood when you do not.

Ranges of light, or imagined light. Your closed eye
and your eyelid:
phosphenes… hoofbeats, thunder.

The nothing before conception

The first windy day nearing spring, birdless.
Wind rushes through the world’s auditorium.
It occupies without dimension. The lawns,
half-ochre and an achey green,
dotted purple— star-petaled balloon flowers.

Giving up the birds, the wind and earth continue planting.
The rush of winds speaks like a ghost,
of— what? It feels like faceless waters,
the god of creation in darkness.
It feels like giving up the birds.

Mirepoix

I take an onion out of its bag in the dark drawer. The rasping,
translucent skin splits where a green tip. On the cutting board,
things growing in the pantry may rest a while.
I open the refrigerator for celery, and stare like an especially
forgetful, hungry cow at the clean white room which slows rot,
and think The refrigerator is a plant-spaceship. I grab
the bag of carrots when the compressor shudders on
and close the perfect door. The pan is not hot.
Still, the unpeeled carrots and onion grow on the smoothed wood.

Stillness: halving the onion before my eyes water.
Watching carrot shavings brown in a pile. My hands
search within the dirtless peculiarities of my vegetables,
and I want to pardon the celery for the gnats it traps
in its smooth sculled leaves, and also for being forgettable.
I think Vegetables do not have cell phones. Only a stomach’s
acid bath decodes their euphoric patterns
and the oil, another mystery entire, smokes.