Kathleen Hellen: 2 Poems

helicopters at dusk

Vines weave through the trail along wild raspberry and thorn, tiger lilies, ironweed, pinwheel-daisies and complaints afoot ... I can't imagine having children ... I worry so much ... I come upon a skull bleached clean among the tufts of grass among the deadwood carpeted with moss, leg bones bits of spine in intricate design atop the secret kingdom of the dying. Suddenly the word of god blasts from an passing truck. Have faith! believe in things you cannot see ... in the manner of the trees. In the stamina of animals. Faith in sleep of dog and possum disemboweled, the carcasses of crickets. In desiccated moths. The rat beheaded, like video of hostage.

fascist octopus

after Orwell

                                                hiding in plain dark
not to be confused with a reduced
state of consciousness

drops
an arm
          if it has to
                                  dragged
                                                to surface
exposed

​to bragbeaks squawking
not to be confused with politics

Kathleen Hellen is the author of three collections, including Meet Me at the Bottom, The Only Country Was the Color of My Skin, and Umberto’s Night, and two chapbooks. Featured on Poetry Daily and Verse Daily, her work has appeared widely in such journals as Arts & Letters, Cimarron Review, Colorado Review, The Massachusetts Review, New Letters, North American Review, Prairie Schooner, The Sewanee Review, Southern Humanities Review, The Sycamore Review, and West Branch, among others. She is the recipient of the poetry prize from Washington Writers’ Publishing House, and prizes from the H.O.W. Journal and Washington Square Review.