The Passionate Transitory

TESS KINCAID

Badger

It's a shame to be misunderstood –

humble unkissed smile,

penchant for wearing black and white,

too often mistaken for skunk.

He's not annoying in the least,

in fact, badgering is welcome –

the fondness for nocturnal burrowing

most attractive.

Just because he says he hates society,

doesn't mean he wants to be shunned,

considered vermin,

like his crazed weasel cousin.

That world-weary cynicism

is only a form of charming self-defense –

he simply enjoys romantic places,

and can see best at night.

Prelude & Fugue

Angela Hewitt swan-floats,

oblique, as if a wire

from the piano,

is strung from her hips

through the top of her head;

she wings a Bach fugue.

It makes me tired

to watch the weightlessness,

the indirect skew.

I want her to scuttle in slippers,

cut loose from the string.

Oblivious

Friday night –

the neighbor's door wide;

guests arrive for sushi.

His mother walks –

oblivious at twilight,

slow red dot of fleece.

She steps and claps.

I think of her stinging hands,

how she slaps the rhythm numb,

to shoo away death.

Rowers in a galley ship

she sets the pace, I pedal.

I ring my bell, wave

as she passes the barn.

She pays me no mind.

Tess Kincaid's poetical debut, Patina, a collection of poetry stemming from her love of ancestry and all things vintage, was chosen as semi-finalist in the Finishing Line Press Open Chapbook Competition 2010. A second chapbook, Unpressed, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2013.

She is author of the award-winning blog, Life at Willow Manor, where she posts lifestyle articles of her ventures in a ramshackle limestone house along the Scioto River in Dublin, Ohio. As founder of the interactive creative writing blog, Magpie Tales, Kincaid is passionate about investing in the international writing community.

Her poem Irish Madness was given honourable mention in The Ohio Poetry Association's Ides of March Competition 2011, and her poems have also appeared in Painted Bride Quarterly, Iodine Poetry Journal, and the Ohio Poetry Association Anthology.