Visit

They cross the threshold
of our humming house & we fold our wings, falling

drowsy as geese, nuptial
in the window’s evening flare. Your parents now:

at the couch, settling
the floor, shrugging their ghosts to the steaming tiles.

I could rise, fruit
in boxes mellowing the air behind. I could

be gone, not
sit, speaking, with the ones

you love, at our hearth,
brooding to dreams silent as the balm

of an apple, longevity
alighted, close, a roost, breathing, lying, at hand.

• About
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Kjerstin Kauffman

Kjerstin Anne Kauffman is a poet and essayist living in Spokane, WA. Her work appears in The Cimarron Review, The Hopkins Review, 32 Poems, The Cresset, The American Poetry Review, and elsewhere.

Also by Kjerstin Kauffman (see all)

• Work Done? David Mason’s Pacific Light - February 19, 2023
• Well Said: New Prose by Daniel Brown - September 21, 2022
• Spells & Structure, Structure, Structure: On C. Dale Young’s Prometeo and Marcia Karp’s If by Song - May 22, 2022

Author: Kjerstin Kauffman

Kjerstin Anne Kauffman is a poet and essayist living in Spokane, WA. Her work appears in The Cimarron Review, The Hopkins Review, 32 Poems, The Cresset, The American Poetry Review, and elsewhere. View all posts by Kjerstin Kauffman