POETRY MONDAY: December 6, 2010
Krista Lukas
I’m pleased to introduce a poet whose work was unknown to me until a group of her poems showed up in our P.O. box. They’re well worth a look – and another.
Krista Lukas’ poems have appeared in Best American Poetry 2006, Creative Writer’s Handbook, New Poets of the American West, and a number of literary magazines. She is has received a Nevada Arts Council
fellowship and the Robert Gorell Award for Literary Achievement from
the Sierra Arts Foundation. A manuscript of her poems was a finalist
for the 2009 May Swenson Award. Recently, her poem “Letter to My
Ancestors” was translated into Russian and published in Polutona
magazine. Krista lives with her husband in Nevada, where she serves
as an elementary school gifted and talented specialist.
Below are three new, previously unpublished poems by Krista Lukas.
Irene Willis
Poetry Editor
The Reception
They stand before a table
laid with the good silver,
homemade cake on a pedestal,
a sheer ribbon tied to the knife.
My mother wears a plain beige
dress, her curled hair sprayed firm.
My father is smiling,
eyes ahead and bright blue
as the blue of his jacket, a white rose
pinned to the lapel. Mother’s darkened
lashes hide her eyes, looking down,
but she smiles, too—widely,
genuinely—neither of them posing.
It doesn’t match what became her regrets:
no formal gown, so few guests,
the courthouse and the justice
of the peace. They look happy
and young, their teeth so white,
their faces smooth as children’s.
They must have liked this picture,
one of few kept behind glass in a frame—mine,
now. I hold the shards of what was to come,
and this snapshot of their laughter—
perhaps about his having to climb
in a window for his shoes that day—
or perhaps they are nervous: new
bands of gold encircle their ring fingers,
his hand covers hers, and together
they slice through angel food,
whipped cream, strawberries
already halved.
The first task of marriage:
Take a knife. Cut up the sweet.
The Counselor
We sit side by side on a love seat
across from her. I hug a needlepoint pillow
and fan my keys on the armrest:
office, mailbox, car, house, unknown.
She asks another question,
hands folded in her lap, the church
without the steeple. She wears a pearl
ring in rose gold, wedding band
seeming to match the brain coral, pale
pink and mounted on a stand
between reference books. My husband
doesn’t have the answer, fails
once again to explain. His voice recedes
as my gaze drifts toward the coral,
sea flower, cousin to anemones, the jelly,
skeleton of a living being—an animal
with the fortune of resembling
the mind: folds and channels
kneaded by attachment, stimulation,
pulsing of water. Skeleton
of the beautiful, of something once
alive, that might have survived
two hundred years—how many
life spans, how many days—
living being, builder of reef,
home to smaller creatures, lifted
from the ocean, dried, affixed, displayed,
sold.
Divorce
The v slices
the word—
Di- spins down
to the left, alone
comes to sound
like die,
what you are
sure you want.
And -orce, cut off,
a spewed-out
syllable, a spiny
thing that rakes
your gut. What’s left
is –v-, a blade
to carve all new
v’s of your
body: armpit, elbow,
the cunt, the corners
of your mouth. The wells
between your toes, your fingers,
where the webbing
has evolved out, where now,
in place of your diamond—
a pale soft band of skin.