Kaya Oakes
3 poems
**
(change is relative)
Everything that clings
clings for a reason; evolution, violence,
recognition in the grainy blur.
Only money never plays with memory.
I cannot wait to part from it
and never see it, really, aside from moments
when it is out and being counted. We were taught
counting early, but not taught how to hold.
**
(pull)
Every wreck is ridden, washed,
and stuffed back in a drawer. Every fiber tugs
and seperates, and each fillament, in unknitting,
clings. These are the dearer parts of separation;
the fine beginnings, the chafe and trigger
in the midst, the layers unfurling layers
in the end.
**
(suspicious minds)
Dear wreck, I took a lightening strike
and pierced your eye. All the women
who protected you, suspicious,
and rounded in the hips with boundaries
despised the way I spoke.
This never made a difference. Proficiency
at looking out means you will keep your secrets
still – means everything is pulse and grow
and cleave and bitch and drive and drive
until what rolls beneath us hears our story.
**
return to Sawbuck 1.7
**
Kaya Oakes’ collection of poetry, Telegraph, received the Transcontinental Poetry Prize from Pavement Saw Press. Her poems have appeared in Volt, Conduit, Tarpaulin Sky, Coconut, MiPoesias, Parthenon West Review and numerous other journals. Born and raised in Oakland,
California, she teaches writing at the University of California, Berkeley, and is the senior editor of Kitchen Sink Magazine. Her website is http://www.oakestown.org.
**
(change is relative)
Everything that clings
clings for a reason; evolution, violence,
recognition in the grainy blur.
Only money never plays with memory.
I cannot wait to part from it
and never see it, really, aside from moments
when it is out and being counted. We were taught
counting early, but not taught how to hold.
**
(pull)
Every wreck is ridden, washed,
and stuffed back in a drawer. Every fiber tugs
and seperates, and each fillament, in unknitting,
clings. These are the dearer parts of separation;
the fine beginnings, the chafe and trigger
in the midst, the layers unfurling layers
in the end.
**
(suspicious minds)
Dear wreck, I took a lightening strike
and pierced your eye. All the women
who protected you, suspicious,
and rounded in the hips with boundaries
despised the way I spoke.
This never made a difference. Proficiency
at looking out means you will keep your secrets
still – means everything is pulse and grow
and cleave and bitch and drive and drive
until what rolls beneath us hears our story.
**
return to Sawbuck 1.7
**
Kaya Oakes’ collection of poetry, Telegraph, received the Transcontinental Poetry Prize from Pavement Saw Press. Her poems have appeared in Volt, Conduit, Tarpaulin Sky, Coconut, MiPoesias, Parthenon West Review and numerous other journals. Born and raised in Oakland,
California, she teaches writing at the University of California, Berkeley, and is the senior editor of Kitchen Sink Magazine. Her website is http://www.oakestown.org.
