9 May 2008 | Vol. 8, No. 2
Driving back into the city
Here's what I'm trying to say: The deer coming toward us through the dark
and we're unable to see them
The car passing over the bridge into the maw of the city like a willing moth
suddenly wrapped in fire
The cabs rushing downtown like yellow-winged beetles, bearing the beat
of many shuddering hearts
Everything just as we left it, the skyline arching its neck on the horizon,
still growing its spine of suckled spikes
The key slowly clicking in the lock until the door swings open to dinner plates
stacked like scoured turtle shells
The footprints around the bed unfolding in constellations, opening patiently
against the floor
And our thighs rocking together like two moored boats in the night,
all those tender lights held tight in their hulls
There is only one way to say this: We move beneath the moon toward
something other than ourselves—
Never knowing the eyes that bloom around us, only these words holding up
the thin air we breathe
About the author:
Keetje Kuipers has received fellowships from the Vermont Studio Center, the Squaw Valley Community of Writers, Oregon Literary Arts, and SoapStone. She was the recipient of the 2007 Margery Davis Boyden Wilderness Writing Residency, as well as the second place winner of the 2007 Nimrod/Hardman Pablo Neruda Prize in Poetry. Her poems are currently published or forthcoming in Prairie Schooner, West Branch, Painted Bride Quarterly, and Willow Springs, among others. You can hear her read her work at the online audio archive From the Fishouse.
For further reading:
See the complete list of work by Keetje Kuipers at 42opus. Browse the contents of 42opus Vol. 8, No. 2, where "Driving back into the city" ran on May 9, 2008. List other work with these same labels: poetry.