Les Kay
Les Kay holds a PhD from the University of Cincinnati's Creative Writing program. His first chapbook, The Bureau, is forthcoming from Sundress Publications in 2015. His poetry has recently appeared or is forthcoming in a variety of literary journals including The McNeese Review, Redactions, Up the Staircase Quarterly, Wherewithal, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, Southern Humanities Review, Whiskey Island, and Sugar House Review.
Self-Portrait as Gallery Opening
Neardusk sun spoke
blinding viaduct and
interstate, jetstream,
errant geese. Shiver
memories of other
cloudfree skies with
you maybe—or maybe
not—polished dashes,
rainspot windows, turn
signal keeping time.
We were young once,
Chevrolets, weren’t we?
How the fuck can this
nightbound falling be
beautiful? I am
winter ash. I fold
at the tips, freezing
in sunspoke. Cut
me like another sky,
pulp me like a drugged
dream. The geese
return anyway. We
cleave regardless.
Is that why you, so
you say, love clavicles,
casting their split shadows
on bleach white walls?