Mindful | In the Midst by Kim Suttell
Jill Kitchen | gathering
the finches are having an evening party in the tree. skateboards are cracking
against sidewalk a block away while your son throws ladder balls and narrates
each move in the fading light by mountain slip by cloud unfurl as locust
panels of leaf lay scattered like tree exhale from an explosion of hailstorm
earlier. the tree can only hold on to so many leaves. like a mother reaching
and gathering her children the ages of them growing inside her year
after year and she remembers each shape each length of hair each new burst
of language and reaches while the wet storm of them slips further and further
away memories that will gust and crumble into brittle fragments in the field
becoming earth becoming grass becoming food for mice for bear for moose
for mountain lion becoming sustenance for the wild apple tree that curls her
leaves so well over her branches that no one even sees the red abundance
only the animals know how to find it while an owl calls down the veil
of night so softly you think it might be coming from inside you
your very heartstrings
against sidewalk a block away while your son throws ladder balls and narrates
each move in the fading light by mountain slip by cloud unfurl as locust
panels of leaf lay scattered like tree exhale from an explosion of hailstorm
earlier. the tree can only hold on to so many leaves. like a mother reaching
and gathering her children the ages of them growing inside her year
after year and she remembers each shape each length of hair each new burst
of language and reaches while the wet storm of them slips further and further
away memories that will gust and crumble into brittle fragments in the field
becoming earth becoming grass becoming food for mice for bear for moose
for mountain lion becoming sustenance for the wild apple tree that curls her
leaves so well over her branches that no one even sees the red abundance
only the animals know how to find it while an owl calls down the veil
of night so softly you think it might be coming from inside you
your very heartstrings
Jill Kitchen's work appears or is forthcoming in Ecotone, HAD, Parentheses Journal, The Penn Review, Pidgeonholes, Poet Lore, Radar Poetry, Rust & Moth, The Shore, SWWIM, Tahoma Literary Review, Whale Road Review, and elsewhere. She lives in Boulder, Colorado where she can be found rollerskating on the creek path searching for great horned owls. Twitter: @jillkitchen Instagram: @msjillkitchen
Kim Suttell is a collagist just emerging from a career in bureaucracy and spreadsheets. Paper, as her medium, speaks in torn edges, subtle curls, and tiny glimpses of previous use. The grid template references both quilts and ledgers, places where individual pieces must interact to create a new whole. It is the point to limit the format so that color, texture, and fragmentary images make their own movement and meaning.
Instagram: Page48paperart
Instagram: Page48paperart
