Kathleen E. Casey

Mutant White

Chemo therapy isn't good for you.— Christopher Hitchens 
...I say to myself keep on→it will not be the end→not yet— Jorie Graham

This daylight breathes too much mutant white—A cataract blind
of stare—Ink heavy as a hurricane—Hours tangled and distraught.
Hard to tell from where a hope might leak—Hard to think.

Apertures that will not close howl lessons chalked in future dust
with|without despair. Erasure interrupts. Divides a wild nucleus—
Kali's blades sharpening inside the skin—a poison sweet with small
toxicities—little deaths that perpetrate delay—

Like storms you want to dive into an edge of atmosphere stealing breath
as if another body forms to oscillate the atoms of the night.

Patient Kali keeps her source of demolition well.
Cryptic codes.

This Spring the bloodroots streaked in winter bone bear slabs of grief
served cold—Braised in tears untraced—The endless winding
of the night.

No longer will you float inside a facile world—

Kathleen E. Casey is a visual artist and poet living nervously beneath several slumbering volcanoes. She holds a degree in fine art and is the recipient of awards for her photography, illustration and graphic design. Her work has appeared in Funicular Magazine, Hoxie Gorge Review, Jet Fuel Review, Oracle Bone, Poached Hare, Projector Literary Magazine, Poets Reading the News, Rhino Poetry, and Zooetic Press.