Author: Kay Kennett

I hold a Bachelor’s degree in English and Women’s & Gender Studies from Wheaton College (MA). There, I published several poems in the campus literary magazine, Rushlight, performed in poetry readings and slams, and won the Helen Meyers Tate Memorial Prize for Original Verse. Additionally, I published in the online magazines Curbside Splendor and Atticus Review. In my early adult life, I have not pursued creative writing professionally, but rather landed in the field of Marketing & Communications, writing outreach and educational content for nonprofit organizations and schools. I am very involved in civic and community activities, particularly within Education and the Arts. I currently teach enrichment classes to K-5 students, tutor high school students in English/Language Arts, and manage social media and email marketing for a handful of nonprofit and small business clients. Find my full worker identity at LinkedIn. Some other identities that are important to me: only child, child of a single father, working class, tenth-generation (New England) American, first-generation college graduate, living with mental illness, bisexual. Thank you for reading.
.Reading time less than 1 minute.

I found an object
in the street,
vaguely Vermont-shaped,
all bent and
blooming.

A Love Poem

.Reading time 1 minute.

Reading her poetry stirred me up:                                                                                                   eye of newt, wing of dove — whatever.                                                                                           It did not matter. I would have fallen                                                                                               in love all the same.                                                                                                                               Yet, modest, she remained.                                                                                                                 She said: “In your presence, I can never                                                                               remember what to do with my letters;                                                                                           I connect consonant to vowel and                                                                                           vowel to consonant, but what comes out                                                                                   is not a language that I can recognize.                                                                                       Emily colored in her lips                                                                                                       with pencil-crayons, but always kept                                                                                           inside the lines; she was a “sometimes red,                                                                         sometimes deep magenta” kind of girl.                                                                                   She wore collared dresses and thimbles                                                                                   on her thumbs, with flushed cheeks that                                                                            seemed to say: “I know more of hugging                                                                               and kissing than I care to admit.”                                                                                                In her embrace, I was enveloped with                                                                                        the strength of a nightcap (fit snugly to                                                                                  my crown) and could never remember                                                                                    what to do with my Body.

Heads, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes

.Reading time 2 minutes.

I.  On the verge of vertigo, the objects
in the mirror are closer than they appear
to be right-brained would be such
a wonderful thing that mothers always say
is: “Look both ways before crossing
the street” less traveled by will ebb
and flow, but who could miss such a
spectacular show-and-tell needs ears
and eyes are said to be our most expressive
feature films never feature heads
like mine.

II. Carry the weight of your world to my
doorstep. Let it lay upon my shoulders.
Shoulders. Shoulders were built to
shimmy and shake, shake, shake it,
girls were built to touch and taste and
feel better, Love, you’ve got so much left
to prove that force equals mass times
acceleration equals (Vf – Vi)
over time, my shoulders will buckle and break-
ing bread stands for broken bones in
the Bible teaches that we are built to
bear burdens.

III. In fourth grade, I played  as the knee-high
man who stood fallen, unable to get up-
stairs, everyone was laughing, but
I stood frozen, unable to get up
the courage and join them in
Holy Union, by the power invested
in me, and my legs, which buckled at
the “knee me in the groin, I deserve it!”
you spat on my glasses but they were not
dirty dishes made you angry not
mad means crazy – I learned that much in
fourth grade.

IV. Gym teacher says “reach out and touch your toes
—  if you can” throw on a movie and coat
of lipstick, well, you’ll have yourself
a date too mediocre to remember
might make a good little anniversary
one day after my thirteenth birthday,
gym teacher says “you can shoot for the moon,
but you’ll never score a three-point-
one-four was my favorite number in
the universe made me a “Mother,
why don’t you number the stars
anymore?”