https://offcourse.org
ISSN 1556-4975
Published by Ricardo and Isabel Nirenberg since 1998
Poems by Kathleen Hellen
flagellant
…from the lashes of whip and ink the secrets become common…. —Fanny Howe
For every fly that tends, I give it space like Dickinson.
For war, I anthem Owen. For plague, review Camus.
For second coming, Yeats.
For every plastic bag in the recycling bin, I image Moby Dick.
Willa shimmers wheat.
For dainty feet of hummingbirds (Mary Oliver).
Blackbirds? Well, you guessed it.
I edit and amend. Strike. Start again.
unsettling things
after Sei Shōnagon
rain on hot pavement
streets that lack perspective
helicopters at dusk
white men in trucks
slug spit
condoms in the parking lot
pedestrian bubbles
… if eggs go up … I can’t imagine having children … all I wanted was a day off … yes, and … if you already believe no one likes you … what’s his most “bankable skill?”… I worry so much …
call it deleuzian
an impossibly saturated bluish green
not fir nor pine, far from human
spectrum of the garden and the hose
from leaf familiar. blade
from teal further
call it glimpse
of emerald city
tiny square of light at
arm’s length
stimulates the retina
to what a mouse might see
and scarecrow might find useful
for the colorblind.
NOTE: epigraph taken from the following article in Scientific American.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/researchers-discover-new-color-thats-impossible-to-see-without-lasering-your/?utm_source=Klaviyo&utm_medium=campaign&utm_campaign=TIS_042125&utm_term=this%20newly-discovered%20color&_kx=Ytxi7bF85L1qnW00jV9ox4ZZ_9AoGldHt0TLuHIsziI.WEer5A
KATHLEEN HELLEN is the recipient of the James Still Award, the Thomas Merton Prize for Poetry of the Sacred, and prizes from the H.O.W. Journal and Washington Square Review. Her debut collection Umberto’s Night won the poetry prize from Washington Writers’ Publishing House. Featured on Poetry Daily and Verse Daily, Hellen’s work has appeared in Arts & Letters, Baltimore Review, Cider Press Review, Gargoyle, Massachusetts Review, New Letters, North American Review, Pedestal, Per Contra, Tar River Poetry, Valparaiso Poetry Review, and elsewhere. She is the author of The Only Country Was the Color of My Skin, Meet Me at the Bottom, and two chapbooks.