3 Poems by Kim Clark

This Is [1]

the impossibility
of cleansing
the palate
of sorrow

all the wetness
in the body/world
a mere moistening
of the ashen tongue

nothing sharp enough
[black/white]
to cut
the words
loose
either. please.


Sign Off the Times


                                    something about time
                                       in the homecoming from Athens
                             watch-crystal lost in airspace
                                       over Paris or Keflavik
                                            exposed face
                       hands sensitive to my hectoring fingers
                           7:00. 12:50. 10:12. 10:00.
                                       then in Vancouver
                     dead car battery, dead dashboard, dead digits
                               can’t make the ferry boat by the stars
wall clock in this bathroom locked at 5:20
      watching it stopped for hours I can’t see
                                 even ghost numbers lose visibility
                   heroic in the untold

Untitled

pluck and clutch

forsaken muscle

anxious

about whose Harley

****** **** *  loud in the drive *     say

sunny periods

fending off the dullness

of the day shift

overlapping skull plates

picked-over connections

clutch and rev

the rattle *

  of bones

oh          here

and      here.

if I had a title, it’d be Chrome Your Daydream, Baby

Bionote

Kim Clark’s debut fiction (sexysickchiclit) collection, Attemptations (Caitlin Press), was launched in 2011 and one of its novellas has been optioned for a 90 minute feature film. Her chapbook, Dis ease ad De sire, the M anu S cript (Lipstick Press), came out in April, 2012 and her new poetry collection, Sit You Waiting, hit bookshelves in August, 2012 via Caitlin Press. She lives in Cedar on Vancouver Island.