The bounty, poems on ko-fi, and a fragment

Heylo readers!

The big news for today is that I'll be writing a poem every day for the month of August. 

If you'd like to read those poems, I'll be posting them to Ko-Fi.com/kitsteitz and they'll be available for anybody who buys me a cup of coffee throughout the month! 

Look at this pretty hibiscus bloom from my garden!

And now, a fragment of a poem that I found hiding in some lost folder~

a knocking

The robins know you're

here- a call for courting

and the tastes of garlic

and honey follow you in

through the front door

That's all I got, folks. Happy Friday! I'll post the first August poem tomorrow!

love and gratitude,

Kitikins

BIG NEWS! Audiobook coming!!!

Okay, y'all!! BIG ASS NEWS!!!

The fabulous E.m. Knowles accepted a contract to narrate and produce 

AN AUDIOBOOK 

of a record of night!!!!!! 

I am so honored and stoked!

More updates as we go!!! We can't wait to share this with y'all. 

Dog days of summer, Pandemic edition

Dog Summer~

Kiera in a sunbeam,
ear twitch, joy,
nose wiggle,
so many smells!

Hello, my readers! It's days away from August and we're hip deep in a Pandemic. Here in Missouri, very few people have given any fucks and we are left with rocketing numbers of positive Covid-19 cases, so our family is very home-bound. Between furlough and telecommuting, our family has created 2 new flower beds and installed our first victory garden! I have phlox and gladiolas blooming, tomatoes ripening, and a new sense of general okayedness. As I write this, I'm sitting in the afternoon shade on my back porch- Keira is begging to be let in and the air conditioning unit is louder than my music, but all and all, it's pretty alright.

There are a few big creative projects on the horizon that I'm excited to share SOON. Not yet, but SOON.

One is a silly podcast that can best be described as lowfi, low key, and low-brow. But shhhhh! That's not public yet!!

I've slowly updated my various writing profiles to include my new name, pronouns, and information, and working on republishing my chapbook a record of night. I'm an OKAY novelist, but I'm a damn good poet, so keep alert for the big reveal! New name, new cover, new forward, same love <3

And a project so hush hush I can't even hint about it, but I AM SO EXCITED I WILL LEAVE THE CAPSLOCK ON. I can't wait to share it with y'all.

Hope y'all are doing your best during this shitty period in our history.

Love and future vaccines,
Kit

A poem about mountains

After sunrise

Our tongues burn
from the Christmas sauce
in the best
breakfast burritos Española 
has to offer.

We four traveled
Past the black mesa,
peaks stretch across
the bright horizon,
a mountain range
like a heartbeat,
or waves of music
dipping into the
next bow stroke.

Snow, punctuated by
trails of hoof prints,
a herd of elks
trekking across the
Valles Caldera.

Back in Columbia,
I found hatch peppers
in the grocers,
And we made
enchilada bowls and
we remembered
Sledding in the
Mountains.

More snow poetry

Snow clouds wrap around the
horizon like a blanket you just
pulled from a cold linen closet
I long to see a the red splash of a
cardinal darting between snow
covered branches, diving for seeds,
before the next arctic storm
covers us in a fresh layer of snow,
gives me an excuse to join you
under the comforter and wrap
around each other.

Snow poem

I don't know if you've heard, but the Midwest had record levels of snow last weekend. I helped one of my partners dig out and I can tell you, I felt every 20 inches of those drifts. I started a poem over the snow day but was distracted by hot coco, so I never finished it.

Then I lost it! First poem I've written in 2 years and I lost it.

So I'm going to pull a Tenacious D moment and give you a poem about the greatest snow poem that ever was. It's not the poem, but a tribute.


Snow Poem
a tribute

It snowed 20" this weekend-
The Bradford Pear was laden
with the heavy weight of a
winter storm, boughs creaked
in the whip-cold wind, puffs of
white exploded and dropped heavy
to the drifts below until 20 inches
felt more like 30 inches and
the dog was lost beneath;
I know you were wishing
that the snow would finish off
that invasive tree, would snap it in
twain, but you didn't say it out loud.

easley river road

This is a poem from my chapbook, a record of night. This almost-sonnet was written about a tryst with a married man (shock! gasp!) who was separated from his husband but was still remarkably unavailable. If you don't pine for a few emotionally unavailable humans in your college years, can you really say you went to college?

If you're interested in reading more of my poetry, please check out my chapbook at Amazon!

Don't forget leave a review and rate the chapbook at Amazon! It will help raise visibility and your feedback means a lot to me. 

when we die

This is a poem from my chapbook, a record of night. My soon-to-be ex-wife and I didn't talk much about what would happen when we died, but I thought about it. I find the idea that I could be a part of feeding the plants and integrating fully with the natural world after death to be very soothing. Our ashes won't mix together after death, but I still enjoy reflecting upon my ashes mixing with the roots of a chicory.

If you're interested in reading more of my poetry, please check out my chapbook at Amazon!

Don't forget leave a review and rate the chapbook at Amazon! It will help raise visibility and your feedback means a lot to me. 

telescope

This poem is from my chapbook, a record of night. This poem was started on a night with a clear sky, full of stars, and a cold longing for a dear friend who was very far away.

If you're interested in reading more of my poetry, please check out my chapbook at Amazon!

Don't forget leave a review and rate the chapbook at Amazon! It will help raise visibility and your feedback means a lot to me. 

In the process, everything

This is a poem from my chapbook, a record of night. I was inspired to write this poem by a jar of honey I had left in my mud room/writing room. The room was not as well insulated as the house, an add-on where a porch used to be, and I found myself staring into it as the seasons progressed. It was like staring into a bonfire or candle flame.

If you're interested in reading more of my poetry, please check out my chapbook at Amazon!

Don't forget leave a review and rate the chapbook at Amazon! It will help raise visibility and your feedback means a lot to me. 

Feeding the creatures...

My partner in most things interesting has picked up her pen again
And I like writing with her, next to her, about her, so. Maybe it's time to revive the poetry portion of this blog again. That's where the creatures live, anyway.

I'm 100% sure nobody really reads my blog. Anyway here's a sassy poem.


The quiet of your bedroom,
or the hush of fresh snow
on a meadow or an abandoned lot
between two looming
city buildings at 3 am.

The way your skin tastes,
salt, a kalamata olive, after night
and the way we tangle like sweaty hair,
breath at the nape of your neck.

The way you punctuate your sighs
like the dropped fragments of
Sappho's lost volumes, or thunder
that rolls up from your stomach
and slips out in a jaw-clenched growl.

The way young women speak with
a flip at the end of their sentence, a question on pointe,
like we don't know how this will end
but breathless, stumbling, we find our way.

When we ended

I wrote one poem during the beginning of the end that I'm interested in sharing.




When we ended

When you are a simple thing

The red fridge alphabet magnet

And then she does not come home

When you are both now south poles

And she doesn’t love you anymore

The rise and fall of simple things

When she comes home

April 10th, 2016

Three years ago it was thundering
like today
growling across the
grey, balding dome

We eat Frangelica monkey bread
forks sticky instead of fingers

and find warmth
in an embrace
that opens and closes this story
beside the aching spring clouds

April 9th, 2016

Let this be a lost day

the kind where coffee 

is hot, black, and unlimited

strap on some roller skates

and sweat until we forget words

and the complicated layers

of our misbegotten thirties

April 7th, 2016

This day
We spent in hospital waiting rooms
no longer sterile white, or 90s pastels
but filled with landscape art
with textured seating
and warm wood-grain frames
we waited in the cafeteria
and took breaks
huddled for warmth in the truck bed
Just like the other families
whose names were called alongside

April 6th, 2016

Fingers like trees, with rings

new, green, young in the wind

mirrored on each side

One for a wedding

from a wife 

for a wife

One for the heart

from a red head

We start fresh each year

like bulbs

Recommitting to the bloom

April 8th, 2016

I will lead you through the forest
but we will get lost
because there are few things
I need as intensely
as the pungent smell
of a shedding cedar
to dangle my toes over the shadows
of water striders
cast against the rocky creek bottom
to work my way down root framed stairs
and wind through deer trails
without regard for
time or space or others

April 5th, 2016

It's easy to find poetry
In the pocked Capen bluffs

Or the swarm of carp
Bright beneath the gentle
Lapping waves of a waiting pond

Or the relentless flood
Of an April Missouri

It's an escape that gets me
Through to tomorrow

April 4th, 2016

The crux of aquamarine
And mud is simply the
Place where spring meets
River after an Easter rain
Even the fish shiver in
The biting spring winds

April 3rd, 2016

When I'm gone cold, someday,
Plant me beneath a forest.
Give me this last wish-
To feed the roots, to
Soften the steps of fresh
Fawns, to lay beneath
An ancient canopy's shade.
So i can finally find my way home.