Karina Borowicz - Poetry

Saturday Nov 23

On Hiatus

Karina Borowicz’s first collection, The Bees Are Waiting (2012), was selected by Franz Wright for the Marick Press Poetry Prize. Her work has also appeared in AGNI, Poetry Northwest, and The Southern Review.

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Planet Kepler 22B

They say they’ve found another

earth out there, greening like the shaded side

of a boulder.

I don’t know which direction

of the night sky to face.

But that planet’s there somewhere,

anywhere, despite me.

Despite everything that’s turning here

with me. The sleeping

winter colony of ants,

the radio tower’s red star

spilling the light of invisible mandolins,

the inner earth, our real

Milky Way, that glitters

with the minerals of ancestors,

the cave walls at Lascaux, where a herd

of red horses still circles in the darkness.

Sunbeam Bread

How I hated those white gloves, which smelled

of lavender sachet and whose seams

bit my fingers. After mass I’d hold out my hands,

palms up, and beg my mother to pull them off.

Sundays, too, we’d drive down to the bay

and feed the ducks that week’s leftover bread.

It was one of my father’s favorite things,

to walk softly to the water’s edge

and toss handfuls onto the surface.

Like toy sailboats the ducks would glide

leisurely over to claim the floating crusts.

Once I ventured out onto the boulders.

I looked down and could see the ducks’ yellow feet

paddling frantically beneath the surface.