A poem by Kristen Bulger

Kristen Bulger

Kristen Bulger

Kristen Bulger is a poet living in Jamaica Plain, MA and is a recent graduate of the MFA program at the University of New Hampshire. Her work has appeared in or is forthcoming from Salamander, Houseguest, and The Charles River Journal.

The Weightier Ledger
 
The bead of an abacus is ruby wood,
but staring out a window
at a telephone line 
the grey necks of pigeons cower 
 
where I’d want to slip each one across
and stack them neatly, as if on a weightier ledger
I could account for each wager we might risk 
against days, too hard to get out of bed.
 
As if we carry our odds around 
in back pockets I’d rattled 
in the flat bed of a pick-up— how close I could get
beyond my capacity for speed 
 
to where the horizon line shone through
a tender split in the truck’s rust.
And in the time it took
for me to lose my breath, a single red bead tumbled 
 
out of the soft pocket of my memory
where, always, I am given
a name tag, told to write down 
who it is I think I am with a thick marker,
 
and made to stand on a kindergarten riser
in the class picture,
shuffled from one plank to the next, waiting—
measured.