The winds are ceaseless striking. The tenor
of a likeness. The quarrel
of the metal on the door mount
You must learn to be bamboo, she once had said
when I was still in high school, as if
she knew I couldn’t bend
unlike my sister
whose pregnancy at sixteen
broke the silence of our sex
unlike my brother. Even then
always easy on himself
How memory works forward— I had sent them
for her birthday, on the same day
she had bought them for herself
A thousand miles away
A single impulse
Bamboo chimes talking
after years of no-wind trying
The iron of the plates
Bamboo chimes knocking
as of someone at the gate
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 15, Issue 2.
Kathleen Hellen is a poet and the author of Umberto’s Night (Washington Writers Publishing House, 2012) and The Girl Who Loved Mothra (Finishing Line Press, 2010). Her poems are widely published and have appeared in Barrow Street; Prairie Schooner; Subtropics; Witness; among others; and were featured on WYPR’s The Signal.
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