I decided to stay
on the Cape for a while,
unpacked his boxes
of carvings for the dresser:
a whalebone comb,
a brush engraved with ships & sails,
& a seashell lid to enclose strands
of pearls in glass—
all fashioned by his hands.
The only other carving
I placed before the mirror
was of two whales
side by side in the sounding,
up & over the wave,
down & along the bottom,
always curved
one to the other
as they wrestled
the pull of sea.
Kyle Laws is based out of Steel City Art Works in Pueblo, CO where she directs Line/Circle: Women Poets in Performance. Her collections include Ride the Pink Horse (Stubborn Mule Press, 2019), Faces of Fishing Creek (Middle Creek Publishing, 2018), This Town: Poems of Correspondence with Jared Smith (Liquid Light Press, 2017), So Bright to Blind (Five Oaks Press, 2015), and Wildwood (Lummox Press, 2014). With eight nominations for a Pushcart Prize, her poems and essays have appeared in magazines and anthologies in the U.S., U.K., Canada, and Germany. She is editor and publisher of Casa de Cinco Hermanas Press.
© 2020, Kyle Laws
Halfway Down the Stairs 