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.

April Fools

.Reading time 2 minutes.

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Come in, little lamb.
Let me teach:
“How to Bake a Shepherd’s Pie”
In as many days as it takes
For us to die.
That’s not to say
You’re slow at learning
or Death is coming quick.
Don’t be stupid.

Don’t be the Jack who cries
at tripping the candlestick.
Boy, that’s no wolf or foul,
Just a shadow [of doubt].
Be nimble. Hear me out.
Bend your ear to an idea
of Education by which
Practice makes better
is non sequitur.

How to define better,
When tastes change
With the season;
When butter is subject
To become too rich
For no certain reason?
Don’t.
Define your practice.

Trust that interest
And appreciation
For the Arts
Are a kind of devotion
In themselves,
Of greater value than
Any technical skill
You master,
Enough.

You went out like a lion,
With great fortitude,
In April showers
That still may blow
Our house down.
You went out
For Worcestershire sauce.  

Because the recipe
Called for 1 teaspoon
And we had none;
Because this was to be the meal
That set everything right
That made us better
If not perfect
Forever.

Now, at the front steps
Empty-handed,
You kowtow to me,
As if I don’t understand
That there will be days
When handles fly off,
Because we choose
To carry our baggage
Differently.

Come in, little lamb.
Let me teach:
“How to Make it Work”
In as many days
As you are willing
To show up,
Wet and soiled,
But God-willed
To learn.

An Open Letter

.Reading time less than 1 minute.

to they
who have no taste
for tofu

through
no fault of its own
but mine

to they
who have no hearing
for self-

flagellation

to they
who have no sight
for errors

in my tofu
finicky fall   ing apart
and me

to they
who have no smell
for bad-

bloodlust

underlying
crusades
for good

to they
who have no feeling
but love

when touched
too late
by mine.

What a Catch

.Reading time less than 1 minute.

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A woman
without legs
is like a fish
without a bicycle,
unaware that there
are cleaner ways
of moving forward,
than dragging
its belly
across the shore,
like running,
or
riding a bicycle

Bowing to Each Other

.Reading time 1 minute.

I catch them doing it,
in plain sight,
without aid of glasses
or flashlight —
cautious as deer
in duck season.

Deer except for
a certain grace,
which no human actor
may replicate —
regardless of the shoes
she is wearing.

Not that I can say,
being neither close
as a slingshot,
nor far
as a gunshot;
rather, in the range

Of bow and arrow,
where it’s impossible
to give a good lick,
but plausible
they might curl
at the toes.

Do you see what I see?
Standing stockstill
and clothed —
It must be, I know,
their first time doing it
I am catching.

From my bower,
where sanctity protects
and discretion is easy,
I can play along —
should there come
a part fit for me.

A part shaped like
house and chimney,
formed of the negative space
between two columns,
whose alert, animal faces
lurch

Toward the same bit;
to champ together,
separately —
in practical relationship
to one
another.

Catch me creepinglikeadog
[WOLF enters stage center]
to introduce awareness
of that separation,
and the necessity
of feeling it,

As hopefulness;
for more advances on the path
for getting closer to
enlightenment
than this:

The highest form of intimacy is bowing to each other.

Hard Feelings

.Reading time less than 1 minute.

We might call them
easy-to-hang-on feelings
or forms of regret
or crushes
or something else entirely
like how I call them
passing.

From hour to hour,
from day to day,
like clouds,
they manifest
in predictive
patterns and shapes;
but, no duck.

In the sky,
there’s no cover
for lovers,
there’s no milk
for apple pie;
but, perhaps,
enough water

to call them
hard-to-swallow-
but-not-impossible feelings,
or thoughts that run,
or what happens when
one of us says
to the other:

“I’m leaving.”