Kimberly Kralowec

[A cloud formed in the lobby]

A cloud formed in the lobby.
It’s a superstitious day—
you heard the dew point rise.
The crowd’s wonder is colorless,
like the Tuesday sirens. If I want
it still, last night’s dream 
waits for me, at home, in bed.
We’re here for a performance
of glass, heat and water.
Your face wears my expression:
blisters with no burn.
I kept the burn. It’s memory
when I asked for dreams.
Waiting in the lobby
I remember the rain doves,
the loose skin of eucalyptus,
their question and the answer:  
between blood and boil.
These cannot be my hands.

—   The first line was inspired by the art of Berndnaut Smilde

Kimberly Kralowec is the author of a chapbook, We Retreat into the Stillness of Our Own Bones (Tolsun Books, forthcoming May 2022). A lawyer by profession, she holds a J.D. from the University of California, Davis, School of Law, and an English degree from Pomona College in Claremont, California. Her awards include the Patrick J. Hopkins Memorial Writing Award and the F.S. Jennings Prize in Expository Writing. Originally from a small town in the San Joaquin Valley, she now lives in San Francisco and has been named one of the Top 100 Women Lawyers in California. Her poems have appeared in journals such as The Night Heron Barks, High Shelf, Star 82 Review, Birdland, and West Trestle Review.

Learn more about Kim at her poetry blog, http://www.anapoetics.com, and her law blog, http://www.uclpractitioner.com.