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KATHARINE COLES
Katharine Coles’ eighth collection of poems, (Solve for) X, will be released in 2022 by Turtle Point Press, which also published her book of essays, The Stranger I Become: on Walking, Looking, and Writing, in June 2021. 2018-19 Poet-in-Residence at the Natural History Museum of Utah and the Salt Lake Public Library for the Poets House FIELD WORK program, she has received awards from the US National Endowment for the Arts, National Endowment for the Humanities, and National Science Foundation, as well as the Guggenheim Foundation. She is a Distinguished Professor at the University of Utah.
Still Living in My Head
1. I grow used to the way I come to
Myself then go in time, as one fire
Detonates another, ignition
And spark, idea’s charge
Lighting a path and laying
Its own land. Feel an eye
2. Scanning; will I ever know
How to read what may go
Missing or wrong or what
Structure makes the abstract
Work when thought becomes
Mist or a kind of breathing? If
3. The world arrives as it does, un-
Curatable, piecemeal and incurable
Flash at a time, to me
It repairs into whole body
Where I forget to see myself
Thinking. So my rooms fill
4. Windows with delight and air
And hold dark corners
Tight, and this other
Thing, alien and full
Of shadows, could also
Make pleasure a kind of space.
1. I grow used to the way I come to
Myself then go in time, as one fire
Detonates another, ignition
And spark, idea’s charge
Lighting a path and laying
Its own land. Feel an eye
2. Scanning; will I ever know
How to read what may go
Missing or wrong or what
Structure makes the abstract
Work when thought becomes
Mist or a kind of breathing? If
3. The world arrives as it does, un-
Curatable, piecemeal and incurable
Flash at a time, to me
It repairs into whole body
Where I forget to see myself
Thinking. So my rooms fill
4. Windows with delight and air
And hold dark corners
Tight, and this other
Thing, alien and full
Of shadows, could also
Make pleasure a kind of space.
WHEN I WAS JOAN OF ARC –
young, needing a bath, running hot and cold.
When I spoke my truth to power and raised
Armies with a flick of my wrist. When elect
-ricity moved my body forward. However does
Fervor appear? In error, in a flash. When
Painters wanted to paint me and poets
Sang my praises, when I imagined
Nations bent to my will or to God’s
Whatever it was, when I was all my own
Sex and needed nobody else’s
Touch to my illuminate my body in
-side out. I mean, where did that time
Go? If I survived it. Almost in my head
If I didn’t consume myself with flame.
young, needing a bath, running hot and cold.
When I spoke my truth to power and raised
Armies with a flick of my wrist. When elect
-ricity moved my body forward. However does
Fervor appear? In error, in a flash. When
Painters wanted to paint me and poets
Sang my praises, when I imagined
Nations bent to my will or to God’s
Whatever it was, when I was all my own
Sex and needed nobody else’s
Touch to my illuminate my body in
-side out. I mean, where did that time
Go? If I survived it. Almost in my head
If I didn’t consume myself with flame.