by McKenzie | Feb 22, 2016 | Blog, My Poems
It beats. It hums. My heart— what else could beat so cold and low as this : make me a list. give me a kiss : Kalamazoo, I love you. Paris, Baghdad, and Beruit, I love you. What more harm can we inflict than gunfire on a summer’s day, a winter walk, what...
by McKenzie | Jan 22, 2016 | Blog, Craft (Writing Tips), My Poems
Hello all! It’s been a while again, I know. I’ve been missing writing in the worse way but otherwise wrapped up in my new job, writing a new bio: McKenzie lives and writes in South Bend, where she works at Indiana University, etc. It’s been a...
by McKenzie | Oct 24, 2015 | Blog, My Poems
My future & my past are essentially the same: whether it is me or her riding in the back seat, I still have to ask permission of my mother or daughter if I can go anywhere. I traded in my happiness like a receipt for defective batteries, & the world...
by McKenzie | Oct 12, 2015 | Blog, My Poems
or heart—like breathing, you enter waist-high grasses, the tan of prairie dog, fern, wild lily, & the wind takes you up into itself, your body curves & sways with the grasses, canvas, Magritte of the field & passing. How you ended up here,...
by McKenzie | Oct 12, 2015 | Blog, My Poems
propped on a pillow on our oversized coffee table, all of our ice packs lost in the move, & I try to talk to you about my impending job loss, another poem rejected by a favorite magazine,...
by McKenzie | Oct 7, 2015 | Blog, My Poems
I think of you, fellow teacher, and I fear what lies on the other side of the door, the window, the rain. What power lies in waiting, what anger, what brown paper bag concealing fire. I lean back in my desk chair and make myself a little smaller, blend into the...