Poetry – Kathryn Reese
Prompt
She was here this morning. Before coffee, before my alarm, I rolled toward her, traced her outline with my fingertips. She stayed in bed. I did what I could to please her: made almond milk lattes, sliced sourdough and poached hundred year eggs, running
—late for my train: confinement, rails, taking me further and further from her say-something-say-something-say-something her too much perfume still in my hair, her, disembodied and seeking flesh: the tattooed nape of a woman’s neck, the queer flowers on a young man’s dress, his blundstone boots, the narrow narrowing of light
—flickers, daydream halogen. Can there be claret ash, flame maple, burnt sugar in a work about snow? Punctuate this to show melt. Say something: speak to what you have never seen. Don’t lie. Don’t make it up. Don’t come back until you know: almond milk, burnt sugar and the narrowing of light.
Kathryn Reese writes poetry & flash. She lives on Peramangk land in Adelaide, South Australia. She works in medical microbiology and enjoys solo road trips, hiking and chasing frogs to record their calls for science. Her poems can be found in The Engine Idling, Epistemic Literary, Kelp Journal and Australian Poetry Journal. She was a winner of the Red Room Poetry’s #30in30 competition & the Heroines Women’s Writing Prize 2024. BlueSky: @kathrynreese.bsky.social https://instagram.com/katwhetter?
