Four Poems by Beth Konkoski

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Informal

Form your thinking in lines of two.
Let couplets speak their gauzy magic.

Does this form count? No real form but
white space, no imposition but a lift of the pen.

I want to form a thought to be delivered in pairs, to show
up as a duo, in a form like highway no passing lines,

a painted form I perhaps understand best, controlled
and rolling. Not just me, alone, one half of a pair,

but a partnership formed so long ago, formed in struggle
and palm tress, in second jobs at a chain restaurant

trips to the beach where we watched planes and waves
and pretended we loved being broke and young.

Until it became a moment we did love being broke
and young, only a new life had formed by then.

Our formula for success, a form we could pour
ourselves into, a solid mold we made to let the ride begin.

Camouflage

Deer step out from behind
trees, this slip of woods
and me against the bridge
waiting, looking, my own
kind of hidden. Such
blending in, nine of them
impossible. This dusty
Thursday magic with
a hawk dropping off
a branch, talons out
swoop of razor urgency
the wriggling fur something
not a secret long enough.

Four Years Into Grief

She wakes alone and hears the lettuce
stirring in its seed cups. April flirts
with spring but doesn’t commit. The coffee pot,
set to four cups now instead of eight kicks on
while she waits in bed. This cocoon
of cotton sheets and wool doesn’t soften
the grief. He should be here,
the annoyance of his snoring waking her,
the length of her days including
his rattly laugh and deep sycamore
steps. There across the kitchen, no there
in the recliner where he napped.
Some days she almost nets him
with a length of prickly rope
to tie him here at home.

Luck

It doesn’t take a four-leaf
clover or maybe it takes
many, to weave together
days when nothing, no silver

thing worth remembering takes
place. I want to be lucky
enough to have such stand still
hours, to look around and see

each hatching blossom, find my
breath in a shallow puddle
glazed with sky. How long could I
balance in such a mouse trap

instant of stolen grace, numb
to hope or the bellowing
of a lie. I could slip through
the veil of safety, collapse

and let no news rock me back
to sleep. I beg for whittled
time, hollow and with echo
deep enough to reach boredom’s

watermark. Cook, serve, chew, clean
repeat. A calendar to
hold when chaos thunders near
and luck hitchhikes out of state.

Beth Konkoski is a writer and high school English teacher living in Northern Virginia. As often as possible she listens to the sounds of a pen on paper and water across rocks. Her poetry has been published in numerous journals including: The American Journal of Poetry, Gargoyle, and The Potomac Review. She has two chapbooks of poetry, “Noticing the Splash,” with BoneWorld Publishing and “Water Shedding” with Finishing Line Press. A collection of her short and flash fiction, A Drawn & Papered Heart, was published in June 2024 by Kallisto Gaia Press.

Image: John Robert McPherson, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

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