Pratik : PRATIK LA ISSUE SPECIAL: American Poet Genevieve Kaplan's poem

Wednesday, December 29, 2021

PRATIK LA ISSUE SPECIAL: American Poet Genevieve Kaplan's poem

Genevieve Kaplan

You’ve shown interest in weather forecasting

And the tide, learning the tables and knowing the shore.

And there was at times, could be, interest in wildfires: for spotting

and recording and reporting, in sitting in towers and watching

for wisps of smoke from dry trees, tips of voices and elements

that rise.

It’s true the rocks might not know anymore, be unable to tell one

from another, a chirp from a lizard from a shell from a friend.

As for me, I was hoping not to have a body at all. To instead

be left to water and fire and the small bent or broken legs of ants.

And that sort of quiet feeling of walking legless along the shoreline

at dusk.

Genevieve Kaplan is the author of (aviary) (Veliz Books, 2020) and In the ice house (Red Hen, 2011), winner of the A Room of Her Own Foundation’s poetry publication prize. Her recent work can be found in Poetry, Spillway, The Laurel Review, and Thrush. She lives in southern California where she edits the Toad Press International chapbook series, publishing contemporary translations of poetry and prose.

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