Two Poems
/bad animals
Karah Kemmerly
many of them are easy to classify. centipedes are bad. venomous snakes are bad. anglerfish: deceptive. clearly bad. try it: what about cuckoos? (nest thieves! bad.) but it isn’t always so simple. not all cats, for example, are bad. here black cats are unlucky & therefore bad. my cats—who are orange, not black—are also certainly bad. (ask any chair in our apartment. ask the shredded pine of our bedframe.) but some cats are good! or at least mostly good. when you’re struck one afternoon with cramps & a cat purrs on your stomach, its tiny vibrations can help ease your pain. another problem with identification: some bad animals seem so likable. have you ever watched a bat swirl through the garden when dusk begins to slink in? when the sky fades to pink & your body goes weightless & trembling? when such a reckless sort of flight (diving! loop-the-loops!) seems so inevitable? in those moments, even one of the baddest of bad animals—a blood-sucking sky rat—looks like a miniature god. what I mean is, keep your eyes on me when the light changes. what I mean is, I promise I’m trying.
avenue of giants
Karah Kemmerly
for trees they are formidable / thus the name / giants as if
they’re mythic / as if they know something we don’t / when we start
through the eerie tunnel it’s still early / foggy / Hanne asks me
to put on spooky music / says she feels like we’re trespassing
Hänsel & Gretl style in these woods / says redwoods
are proof we know what haunted means / she’s looking up
through the dash & screaming under her breath
like a kid on a field trip at a museum / swerving the car
just a little / manic from a double americano & the Dayquil
I bought her at the Ray’s Food Place in Garberville / this morning
she left her wallet in Eureka / so we drove an extra three hours
round trip to retrieve it from the front desk at the downtown
Super 8 where we spent the night / & now we’re taking
another detour to gawk at these massive old trees / I’m feeling
sort of punchdrunk too / angling my iphone up against the window
to capture the terrifying heights / & send photos of the magic
strangeness to everyone I love / this place doesn’t feel real
so I start to collect evidence / it’s dark in these groves
because the sun doesn’t reach the forest floor / apocalyptic midday
dim like it was during the eclipse / & I find myself drawn
toward the groundlevel flora / stare at ferns & fallen logs
instead of the alien trunks all around us / as if my brain refuses
to comprehend how wide they are / which is wider than I am
tall / I almost ask Hanne to pull over so I can crawl / drop
onto my hands & knees / find something else alive & moving / I
tell her how I always looked down as a kid / searched for bugs
& holes & mushrooms / say I was small as if that explains
the urge / when she was young she paid attention to the gaps
between trees / stood still & waited for movement / ready to dart
if she ever caught a glimpse of something menacing / we are both
so quick to look off-center / to pry open thresholds & seek out
the sublime / we spend the rest of the morning dissecting
our food habits / framing meat-eating as a ritual & describing
squash as if it had real skin / as if you had to flay it
before putting it in your mouth / in the afternoon
it takes us three tries to find a road all the way to the sea
Karah Kemmerly grew up in northern California and received her MFA in poetry at Oregon State University. Her work can be found in THE BOILER, Spectrum Literary Journal, Gulf Stream Literary Magazine, and Santa Ana River Review. She currently lives and teaches in Portland, Oregon.
