Laurie Kolp – Two Poems

Mid-life Desolation

Outside my bay window
wind chimes become
a cacophonous clap.

The sudden breeze
squalls through them
like a naked stranger.

I attempt to make sense
of my body’s spontaneous
rearrangement

try to change Barrenness
filling me: you are a lizard
slithering through sweaty flesh.

Deep down I know
I must adopt
this frigid arrival.

Whether I like it or not,
I must chameleon my way
through the coming season

or else I’ll freeze
like the arcane womb
inside my bay window.

In another life

you stroll back streets
of my mind, alleys
littered with rock hard
bread and sticky buns.
Like a troll, an utter fool,
you sweep dead leaves
with chopped off hands
as if they are decayed
memories, nightmares
overstuffing gutters
while I try to sleep.

Laurie Kolp, author of Upon the Blue Couch (Winter Goose Publishing) and Hello, It’s Your Mother (Finishing Line Press), has poems appearing in concis, Gargoyle, Yellow Chair Review, Crack the Spine, Scissors & Spackle, Pirene’s Fountain, and more. She lives and teaches in Southeast Texas with her husband and three children. More at lauriekolp.com.