by Kathleen Klassen
Pressure-cookered
crockpot-roiled
Eardrum-searing cicada
sizzles Synapses
fold, flare, fire and mis-
fire sniper-tangled
ricochets in concrete
bunker Zinging
like a 4th of July
Christmas Tree
caught
deep in the badlands
desperate to explain
desert wiring
summer firing
Twinkling firmly
in the headlights, stars
and light-strings buzz
shock waves disconnect
fireworks and paradeless
ribbon-cutting ceremonies
sever circuitry Slashed
Globs puddle
like ornaments
off trunk – oblongata’s
frazzled connector
frantic to hurl
themselves off
Stemmed in, stuck
to notions of re
covery, re
habilitation, re
store, re
turn, as if going back
were possible
as if remapped
and rewired
receding neurons
weren’t replaced
Something new
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Kathleen Klassen is a new writer who discovered poetry as a way of coping with a significant head injury. A former athlete and high school teacher, she found herself isolated and lacking creative expression. Thoughts crowded her ailing brain and writing them down helped alleviate the pressure.
Klassen has been encouraged by publication in Bywords.ca, Anti-Heroin Chic, passagerbooks.com, and In/Words Magazine & Press and looks forward to upcoming publication with Alternative Field and ottawater. She has poems appearing in two anthologies and is currently working on two chapbooks.