Upcoming Reading

I’m going to be reading with Edwin Romond at Warren County Community College, as part of the Visiting Authors Series on Wednesday, February 22This event, beginning at 7:30 p.m. in room E208, is free and open to the public. The WCCC Chapter of Phi Theta Kappa, the international honor society for two-year colleges, will provide complimentary refreshments.

For directions to the college please call (908) 835-WCCC or visit www.warren.edu. For more information about the Visiting Authors Series, please e-mail BJ Ward at ward@warren.edu.

Please come out to hear us!

Check out Fire On Her Tongue

Thank you, Annette Spaulding-Convy and Kelli Russell Agodon, for including me in Fire on Her Tongue, an e-book collection of contemporary women’s poetry, done with a 0 carbon footprint! check it out!

My 2nd Book is Coming Out

Word Press in Cincinnati will be publishing my second poetry collection, Precise, in 2012. I’m so excited!

Thoughts on a List of Fears

Thoughts on a List of Fears

 

Given that fear is the opposite of love, see phobia, see philia,

what is the opposite of obsession? The opposite of opposition?

 

Some fears are purely rational:

helminthophobia, the fear of being infested with worms,

hydrophobophobia, the fear of rabies. Also myxophobia,

the fear of slime, closely related to okraphobia,

a subset of lachanophobia, fear of vegetables.

Then again, there are words for fears of some of the finest things in life,

things without which our memories would be empty:

lakes, garlic, music,

meteors, colors, opinions,

flowers, otters, foreplay,

infinity, flutes, northern lights,

solitude, dancing, the heart,

justice, the sea, home,

stars, dawn, daylight,

knowledge, taste and the hearing of good news.

I do not understand anablephobia, the fear of looking up,

or the fears of chins, knees, hair, glass and names.

Of course, some fears are so rational, life without them would seem foreign.

Going to school, even learning itself? Petrifying, especially when the teacher

leaves the room just as you try the new task on your own, without a net,

and everyone is watching, waiting for you to wobble and fall.

Fear of snow makes sense for anyone living at the top of a steep hill,

for anyone with a slight case of cheimaphobia, fear of the cold,

leukophobia, fear of white, or taphophobia, fear of being buried alive.

For those who have been in love more than once, mnemophobia makes

perfect sense. At the first bars of a ballad, Memory can reduce one to tears.

Perhaps I even have a slight case of paralipophobia, fear of neglecting duty,

given the countless nightmares I have had, in which the pets I was caring for

died horrible deaths, left alone in hot, dry apartments for a week. Maybe

that’s why I played halfback instead of forward—a form of performophobia.

Some have climbed the pyramid of terror, from fear of pyramids, say, to

the fear of terror, then the fear of words, then of thoughts, then of the mind and last,

of the self itself.

I have not seen the words for the fears my friends report: fear of buttons,

of possums, insomnia, fundamentalists. Where is the word for the fears of

abortion, abortionists, and abortion protesters? Where are the diagnoses regarding

 

mosquitoes,  April 15, drunk drivers, divorce, insurance forms and panic attacks?

Falling sleep behind the wheel, ebola, identity theft and cactus? The phone ringing

in the middle of the night?

Perhaps single words, even those as elegant as athazagoraphobia, the fear of being ignored,

and angrophobia, that of becoming angry, do not suffice to encapsulate the fears that drive me:

fear of simultaneously landing on the ground, hearing the cracking ankle, and feeling shooting pain,

fear of thinking obscene thoughts about Jesus in church,

fear of misspelling the publisher’s name in a news story,

fear of people who love me more than I love them.

And where is fear of dropping the baby, fear that this perfect little gallon

of potential will be spilled, landing on her head, glassy eyed,

institutionalized for life, never logging her first laugh, all my fault?

 

 

Thanks, Phil Chen and Puget Sound Speaks, for letting me blog for them this year!

 

 

Thanks, Patch!

Sending out a big thank you today to Maplewood Patch for their extra kind review of my reading on Friday night. I’m honored!

Friday Night in Maplewood by Tina Kelley

I’m reading on Friday, Nov. 19 at 8 p.m. at Ethical Culture of Essex County, 

516 Prospect Street, Maplewood, New Jersey 07040
Phone 973-763-1905   Email: info@essexethical.org

Hope to see you!

Spontaneous Singing can be Heard in Infants Six Months of Age

This one also appeared in the current issue of Drunk Boat, with an audio clip, too. Here’s the link.

Perhaps her conception was on an upbeat.
Perhaps one song is about the christening gown
knit from a single strand; she seemed to like wearing it.
Maybe the long ahhhhh notes, repeated, rising at the end,
are dedicated to the giant plush cardinal, the favorite bunny to pat,
the fascinating daily items: toilet paper roll, whisk, playing card.

First Name: Possible

This is from the new issue of Drunken Boat, and has a recording of me reading the poem as well.

“If we knew we were going to be the Beatles, we would’ve tried harder.”
—George Harrison, quoted by his eulogist, Eric Idle

He was the teneral child,
of celebration, departures together, anticipation,
of flying in vacation hats before the destination.

He was the green in my eye
future funambulist, tamer of gators.
He proclaimed, “I brought the loud in the house,”

ottered all summer in layers of liquid glee.

The Word “Kite”

Another one from Gospel of Galore and Beloit Poetry Journal.

THE WORD KITE

In Italian, it’s cervo volante, flying red deer. In French, flying stag.

In Germany, it’s the same word as dragon. In Japan, octopus.

The Spanish cometa suggests the stars, and fengzheng, in China,

is the wind’s stringed instrument. Kite for us is a predatory bird,

from the Old English cyta, for which “no related word appears

in the cognate languages,” though we know now that kites

were once used by virgins, midwives and surviving twin sisters

to hang their laundry up to dry.

Silence Deep as the Bone at the Bottom of the Skull

This is an old one (not the same husband, for example) but slated for the 2nd collection, in the works. Courtesy of Beloit Poetry Journal.

Look at the candlelike

light from the cabin

the shadows of light on snow

my husband inside

the smoke rising up, the warmth

the fire a little machine.

This small world

how the astronaut felt

looking at earth

the only sanctuary

for as far around

as can be traveled to tonight.