Kathrin Köhler

From the Dictionary of Nonexistent Words, a Sampler

this poem reminded me of Ursula K. Le Guin's introduction to The Left Hand of Darkness... What you have done here: to tell the truth by telling it even without words we need to tell it. So lovely. Thank you.

Saint of the Gracious Smile, your lips are cruel

You wear your smile like a veil.
A shroud of modesty and grace is still a shroud.
Cloth can fray and rip
and stain just as easily.

O Saint of the Gracious, you would have us turn the other cheek,
you who have grace in perpetuity.

I do not know which of mine is the other cheek—
the one bruised and bloodied by ignorant hands
or the one bruised and bloodied by familiar hands,
though these are often the same cheek,
the same hand.
...

That Thief, Melancholy

rides in like the wind on the back of April,
stumbles up the drive and gets carsick on the front stairs

needs no invitation
just slips her fingers in
...

I am the lost scarf chased by the wind, I am the snowdrift and the snow

The night is dark and winter is filled with both.
I cannot see for all this waiting.
...

Sea Change

I pretend that I've found you, shipwrecked
and you had lost a lot of blood—
the shore is sick with it
my dress is dyed by it and my hands
my hands are like angels at your side.
...

the art of domesticity

He's never hit her
full across the face, splitting lip and tearing mouth
cracking her jaw like an egg for breakfast.
...

Woman of Wood

he came at me with an ax,
blow after blow lightning sharp, but cold,
and he cleaved me in two —
...

Submersion — stückweise

Es hält sie, cradles her
in its waves,
seaweed growing serpentine through her hair,
undulating and hypnotic.
Hair so dark it shames the night.
...

Stardust

Won first place in the Baltimore Science Fiction Society's 2011 annual poetry contest.

These are not my bones.
They thrum upon muscle and sinew—
the refrain of death and rebirth
to the tune of growth and pain
and wonder.
There is time in these bones,
they remember when I was not yet
myself.
...