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Sister of All Holy Kitchens
by Kate Irving
The fiddleheads leave green approval in her palms.
She prepares them without butter.
My sister is wedded to desire for the world.
Birdcall weakens her, she wants wings.
Her garden makes a feast of departure.
She moves through morning ablutions,
repetition itself is comfort when reason
for it escapes.
This must be the opposite of a journey,
where memory recalls
the distance between desire and habit,
allying flavor with the breakage of bone,
which is why she moved into the kitchen— to sleep
amid the trinity of the daily meal.
Kate Irving grew up in New York City studying art and theater, but did time as a lyricist and studio singer. Her early poetry writing took a hiatus until much later. Her poems have previously appeared in qarrtsiluni, in Press 1, and BigCityLit (1, 2, 3). Kate is also a serious cook — a different but similarly creative outlet that nourishes.
Doing My Part
Today it’s a long way to the river
dragging two large boxes
I don’t remember buying
but addressed to me, all right.
I drop them over the railing knowing
a splash will billow sure as night
closes the mall, sure as lambs
follow tails through the gate
the way hope limped into this century
from the last, the one I learned by,
now flown like a gull’s cry over two boxes
moving down river who knows where. Maybe
halfway across the world they’ll find castaways
grateful for toasters, cell phones,
tall skim lattes, a case of the blues;
something they can really use.
Kate Irving
qarrtsiluni 