{"id":44487,"date":"2019-05-05T13:07:03","date_gmt":"2019-05-05T19:07:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=44487"},"modified":"2019-05-05T13:12:53","modified_gmt":"2019-05-05T19:12:53","slug":"kim-welliver-four-poems","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/kim-welliver-four-poems\/","title":{"rendered":"Kim Welliver: Four Poems"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/strong>READ LOCAL First\u00a0represents Utah\u2019s\u00a0most comprehensive collection of\u00a0celebrated and promising writers of fiction, poetry, literary nonfiction, and memoir. This month we bring you four poems by Kim Welliver. In 2018, Andrew McFadyen-Ketchum awarded her poem, “Thriving,” First Place in the Utah Original Writing Competition.<\/p>\n

Welliver has lived in Indiana and California. Currently, she works and resides in Utah. Her poems have appeared in numerous publications, including Cold Creek Review, Mid-American Review, Eyedrum Periodically, Thief, Palette, Duende, The Healing Muse, and several anthologies.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Utterly, This Terrible Red<\/strong><\/h3>\n

  <\/h4>\n

troubles your dreams, rises<\/h4>\n

like bruised flesh. Retrace your steps<\/h4>\n

through the wood\u2014toadstools like eyelids,<\/h4>\n

foxes whelping to a chainstitch<\/h4>\n

of thrush-song\u2014find the place of thick-bodied<\/h4>\n

oaks. Remnants of your scarlet cloak showing<\/h4>\n

through black loam and the bones of trees:<\/h4>\n

the rags of a corpse, frost-heaved.<\/h4>\n

  <\/h4>\n

Half shadow. Half smoke. He follows<\/h4>\n

  <\/h4>\n

Sliver of girlhood, your bible<\/h4>\n

a bestiary bound in fur. Teeth. Fearless<\/h4>\n

in your scarlet cape and boot-tucked pantry knife<\/h4>\n

you set out for the Conjure-woman\u2019s cottage.<\/h4>\n

You\u2019d father\u2019s tuppance, mother\u2019s ruddy<\/h4>\n

jam and honey. Tender for a charm<\/h4>\n

to keep crows from the fresh-set field<\/h4>\n

of rape. Fever from the sow. Always<\/h4>\n

her house muzzled in tree-dusk and wings.<\/h4>\n

  <\/h4>\n

Eyes lantern the undergrowth.<\/h4>\n

  <\/h4>\n

Always you, half-spooked by her strange runes<\/h4>\n

and rootwork. The low ceilinged room blazing<\/h4>\n

its cauldron-heat. But here is her rocker overturned.<\/h4>\n

Her yarb bowls shattered. Her body<\/h4>\n

dappled in gore. And here<\/h4>\n

the rough beast of need. Your petticoat slid<\/h4>\n

to the floor.\u00a0 Fury spent its red mouth at your breast.<\/h4>\n

You awoke to an empty bed. Tangled<\/h4>\n

in damp linens\u2014stained.<\/h4>\n

  <\/h4>\n

The dark blurs. A ravening against the sweetness of flowers.<\/h4>\n

  <\/h4>\n

Clutching the truth, its thrall and sting,<\/h4>\n

you crafted your story as you ran home. The moon<\/h4>\n

turned its eye, pulled its spotless skirts<\/h4>\n

across field and farmland. Dumb sheep.<\/h4>\n

Sleeping hounds.\u00a0 Returning to this place<\/h4>\n

Its tick and whisper of leaves and limb,<\/h4>\n

the dim animal communion of heat,<\/h4>\n

of soft dying things. Your own tender wounds.<\/h4>\n

Your mouth unbeautied,<\/h4>\n

again and again crying wolf.<\/h4>\n

  <\/h4>\n

  <\/h4>\n

The Shape Beneath the Stone<\/strong><\/h3>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0St Joseph Cemetery,<\/em><\/h4>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Baby\u00a0 Girl Bigelow<\/em><\/h4>\n

  <\/h4>\n

Flickered yellow between dark growth pressed into greening and fading dearth. Here, in this populous city of bone, I am unparented. Folded into, and under, and onto. And nameless. Womb music\u2019s given over to murmuration: distant train rumble, lone whistle. The adumbration of winter cardinal, spring finches, pulling seedy heads from bluestem. And the shhhussshhh of \u00a0linden leaves. No mothered lullaby. This susurration. My seeing is twofold: hazed, and panoptic. Underside of stone, dim glazed, wormy. Now incomplete, I am pleated. Birdwing-fold. Iliac glimmer through organza, my small sleep. Stone\u2019s inscription should circumscribe me, (circum-malediction) timbered below stony edifice. I no longer am. No peachskin breast silked cheek, milksuckle. Such stillness. This stone. My stone. My briefness. Thimbled. Shoeboxed into soil and sod. Years wheel overhead. Grayfaced sky low-bent; a kind of mothering. Groundskeeper rides his Deere. Concentrics, repetitions, angles, lines. My story recast in vegetation. Infant greens cut down. \u00a0I shoulder into cradled coldness, a kind of forgetting. Crows sort the sky. Blackwing. Shadow. Isolation\u2019s bluing vertices. What is only inferred now. Interred. Beneath this stone. I am forgetting.\u00a0 My name.<\/h4>\n

  <\/h4>\n

 <\/p>\n

A Suddenness of Eyes<\/strong><\/h3>\n

  <\/h4>\n

Do you recall<\/h4>\n

the bouquet of peonies we strung<\/h4>\n

in the west facing window that June<\/h4>\n

and how the drying petals,<\/h4>\n

plummy as the crust on the port’s cork, curled<\/h4>\n

and puckered? Two weeks later<\/h4>\n

our floor littered with their dying crimson. \u00a0Like smears<\/h4>\n

in a crime scene photo. Static death.<\/h4>\n

wildflower seeds grow in unsightly snarls–weedy<\/h4>\n

cacophony rather than a planned tumble<\/h4>\n

of bright color.<\/h4>\n

The nine month wait–<\/h4>\n

damp bowl of the pelvis opening, \u00a0at last,<\/h4>\n

to shocking deformity. The doctor mapped it:<\/h4>\n

gene mutation; chromosome deletion.<\/h4>\n

Nurses, in \u00a0a calmness ofpink, offering tepid<\/h4>\n

thimblefuls of water<\/h4>\n

refused to meet our gaze.<\/h4>\n

I needed to believe<\/h4>\n

that if faced with \u00a0a commonplace tragedy (as mundane as the five-<\/h4>\n

legged calf at the county fair,) I would pull it<\/h4>\n

to my breast,suckleit<\/h4>\n

on my body’s warmth; my thin sweet milk.<\/h4>\n

I didn’t anticipate… \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I didn’t anticipate…<\/h4>\n

there the ripened child:<\/h4>\n

the alien hand; a suddenness of eyes.<\/h4>\n

I become the mirror, draped. The clock<\/h4>\n

stopped with black crepe. I wrap grief in tissue, tuck<\/h4>\n

  <\/h4>\n

it into a drawer behind A Flower Book of Baby Names<\/em>,<\/h4>\n

and my apple-pip rosary.<\/h4>\n

Remember how those windowed \u00a0flowers<\/h4>\n

strained the light through their small bones.<\/h4>\n

until it fractured on the floor.<\/h4>\n

I cup loss to my cheek–<\/h4>\n

a baby’s clipped curl<\/h4>\n

l slip<\/h4>\n

into a heart-shaped pocket.<\/h4>\n

Locket.<\/h4>\n

Lock it.<\/h4>\n

  <\/h4>\n

  <\/h4>\n

A Carpentry of Angels<\/strong><\/h3>\n

  <\/h4>\n

From the darkness we conjure them,<\/h4>\n

from the brain\u2019s labial meat, the heart\u2019s<\/h4>\n

pure disease; how assiduously<\/h4>\n

we tailor them. <\/em>Not cup or wolf or star<\/h4>\n

(though any of these just as practicable, just as adequate entire)<\/h4>\n

The turn of jaw, line of throat, clavicle sweep, ours.<\/h4>\n

We burnish our kettled reflection in haloes, in wings.<\/h4>\n

Beings we fashion so like our better selves,<\/h4>\n

so glowingly white as to be nacred. Sacred and<\/h4>\n

yet so approachable. Our own splendid<\/h4>\n

doppelgangers risen from sawhorse and shavings<\/h4>\n

pinned with feather spine and covert, arrayed in<\/h4>\n

buttermilk and oyster. We repeat the mantra<\/h4>\n

of revival tents and pew, of gothic<\/h4>\n

windows pouring their vitreous shine over our heads,<\/h4>\n

silver-stain straining haloes to starburst, we nail<\/h4>\n

them, beggared of sublimity, to glass and canvas. Steep<\/h4>\n

their limbs in drapereried light. Tethered<\/h4>\n

to our shoulders we task them with gathering<\/h4>\n

lost keys and cats. Safe travels.<\/h4>\n

Encumber their lean frames with a mundanity of lottery<\/h4>\n

winnings, parking spaces, winning teams.<\/h4>\n

Truly nothing of the air about them, despite<\/h4>\n

their feathery composite. They follow us,<\/h4>\n

baffled. Obedient as cowed dogs, insubstantial<\/h4>\n

as swamp fire bobbing behind us.<\/h4>\n

Our woes, fears, greed, despairs tucked into them<\/h4>\n

As though they were pockets, or coat racks.<\/h4>\n

Between \u00a0toothbrush and coffee, we bow our heads,<\/h4>\n

muttering bless us, bless us, bless us.<\/em><\/h4>\n

 <\/p>\n

****<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

READ LOCAL First\u00a0represents Utah\u2019s\u00a0most comprehensive collection of\u00a0celebrated and promising writers of fiction, poetry, literary nonfiction, and memoir. This month we bring you four poems by Kim Welliver. In 2018, Andrew McFadyen-Ketchum awarded her poem, “Thriving,” First Place in the Utah Original Writing Competition. Welliver has lived in Indiana […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1566,"featured_media":44488,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_piecal_is_event":false,"_piecal_start_date":"","_piecal_end_date":"","_piecal_is_allday":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,2513],"tags":[3435],"class_list":["post-44487","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-literary-arts","category-read-local-first","tag-kim-welliver"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/Kim-Welliver.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-20 14:01:32","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44487","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1566"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44487"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44487\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44497,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44487\/revisions\/44497"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44488"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}