Megan Kaminski
From "a very lonely place, with unbroken horizon, under a cloudless sky"
Pre-storm stillness and skunk-spray
lingering morning sounds
lawnmower and your favorite Beyoncé
neighborhood creaking to stream
downriver each patch of sheet
moon-soaked from the night
ghosted sleep that can’t
forget hand on thigh on neck
illuminated by spark by glow
each day the task of erasure: what
keeps and scraps that must
be buried in clay-streaked sod
baby bluestem grass overturned tray
car shadow against the pinking sun
* * *
I woke left hand covered
in darkness sun hiding from ongoing
drip drop rivulet of mud outset flanking
bedroom window I woke to day salted
by the Atlantic: the trace of Whitman
and grayish sky the tuck of shirt into trousers,
feet burying sand into earth I woke today
and again until I couldn’t wake or wait
each waking a turn through houses
clouds crumble above dissolve into
breath, wind across tall grasses
across plains swallowing syllables
The title of this sequence is borrowed from Arthur Schopenhauer’s description of the prairie in The World As Will and Representation.
Megan Kaminski is a poet and essayist—and the author of three books of poetry, Gentlewomen (Noemi Press, 2020), Deep City, and Desiring Map. Prairie Divination, her collection of essays and oracle deck with artist L. Ann Wheeler, turns to the plants, animals, and geological features of the prairie as guides for living in good relation to each other. She is an Associate Professor in English at the University of Kansas and leads community poetry workshops throughout the state of Kansas through Humanities Kansas.
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