Les Kay

PORTRAIT OF AN ARTIST AS A YOUNG WOMAN

As when you imagine yourself
An opossum treed by domesticated dogs,
Waiting with bared teeth as seemingly solid
Branches crack beneath your feet, lightening
Your pouch, all that you carried with you,
So to the dawn, when ideations of a better life
Ally themselves with dust-covered notions
Of politics—fragments from your own personal
Precambrian period—and you wonder
What it is you have to offer, how long you
Can continue to hiss away leaping dogs,
The distance between now and when
Night is taken from you, and whether anyone
Has heard the circling,
                 so to the blank pages,
Your own riverrun, silversilent in moonlight,
A clutch of broken branches, a song.

Les Kay is a doctoral student at the University of Cincinnati. He earned an MFA from the University of Miami, where he was a James Michener fellow. His poetry has appeared in Tar River Poetry, Eclipse, PANK, Jabberwock Review, South Dakota Review, la fovea, Blue Earth Review, Redactions, Cellpoems, and elsewhere.