Kelly J. White - Lucid Rhythms


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"I know noble accents And lucid, inescapable rhythms" ----Wallace Stevens "Thirteen Ways of Looking at Blackbird" Issue 2 - 2008 Kelly J. White Kelly J. White, a New Hampshire native, studied at Dartmouth College and Harvard Medical School and has been a pediatrician in inner-city Philadelphia for more than twenty-five years. Her poems have been widely published over the past decade, in journals including Exquisite Corpse, Nimrod, Poet Lore, Rattle and the Journal of the American Medical Association and in several chapbook and full-length collections. This year she was recipient of a 2008 Pennsylvania Council on the Arts grant in poetry.	Kelly J. White Memory Snapshot Pantoum Memory Snapshot Pantoum I was remembering how to laugh, forty, single with three children, my marriage ending after sixteen years, didn’t even get the house. Forty, single with three children, I got a one bedroom apartment-- didn’t even get the house-- had to buy all new furniture from IKEA. I got a one bedroom apartment. The kids are at their father’s. (Had to buy all new furniture from IKEA.) There’s nothing I can call mine. The kids are at their father’s. This guy from church asks me to dinner. There’s nothing I can call mine. I’m pretty nervous but I go. This guy from church asks me to dinner. His cousin is visiting from Vermont. I’m pretty nervous but I go. The cousin is touring colleges with his son. His cousin is visiting from Vermont. I’m from New Hampshire. The cousin is touring colleges with his son. We talk about Dartmouth. I’m from New Hampshire. We discover we met twenty years ago. We talk about Dartmouth. We figure out we took a sauna together in November 1974. We discover we met twenty years ago I took a trip to Farm & Wilderness Camp. We figure out we took a sauna together in November 1974. I was twenty and slender and strong. I took a trip to Farm & Wilderness Camp. I chopped wood and plunged into a cold lake. I was twenty and slender and strong. I had friends, I had adventures, I was alive. I chopped wood and plunged into a cold lake, my marriage ending after sixteen years, I had friends, I had adventures, I was alive. I was remembering how to laugh. Ocean My palms are blind. I must read skin with them like Braille: scab, scar, stitch, sting, read fever from the brow, hunger from the hollow belly, fear in the squeezed-tight lids, thrust neck, hunch Mary presses my palm to her child’s neck, “Have you ever felt anything softer?” And the empty eyes of my hands weep, salt for Briana, milk for Bonnie, blood for their mother, carrying again, drunk. Two hands, thumbs to press the muscles of anger, fingers to dance rest, to build the lattice of the confessional before my eyes Think, child, the tears of the Bodhisattva, the hundred thousand eyes of her hundred thousand hands all weeping at the knots of our pain.
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