AMBITION
By Abigail Van Kirk
Ambition
Scrape coffee grounds from under nails for the altar.
Lift up tatters of atriums and ventricles,
two each for disheartened ones,
beside other meager
bruised-fruit offerings.
Peaches in sick-sweet rottenness,
downing their pits and kulning
with this throat.
Swallow salt off my brow
for a semblance of thanks.
Aubade for Autumn
Kiss me on the mouth
the way you found me–
pollen dust
over last days of summer
when mountains are in west aphelion
to golden sunup.
Slinking with forest sylphs
in hushes like half-turned leaf shuddering,
choking on the haze of summer’s last rebellion,
wildfire on plains to have its say before the turn.
Kiss me on the mouth like the drizzle of afternoon,
the last of my mother’s garden silhouetted on the blinds in honeyed light.
Suburbia
Hole-punched stars peer through black construction paper,
insistent wind prying its way through cracked open sliding glass doors.
I am half-here, half-not, have not the ability to let you go.
Minutes before, in dusk, geese squawked their cacophony.
A mockery, they and humans can fly and yet
how can I find my way to you, if you don’t want me?
About the Author:
Abigail Van Kirk is a student at Western State Colorado University and often adventures along the Western slope of the Rockies. Her work has been published by The Haiku Journal, the Manifest West anthology, Caravel Literary Arts Magazine, and elsewhere.
