Karen joy Brown

chapbook preview FALL 2023.…

I've been writing poems since third grade, but have complied my first chapbook this year. Updates coming when it's available online and hard copies!

My Heart is the Color Terracotta

My heart

is the color

terracotta.

Lacey, iridescent ribbons

running through,

it breaks and crumbles

so easily.

Only fire reanimates;

a burning down

to build back up;

holding and giving way,

holding, cracking, giving way,

burn, build; holding

translucent green

beginnings.

Summer is Dying

I know summer is dying and I

think it knows too. 

The light, early morning to late 

evening seems absent minded in its persistence.

I sense confusion all around the

roses, vines, and declining grasses

dropping into brittle browns, resting 

lifeless leaves in haphazard

patterns on dry soil beds.

We know it´s time. 

The late sunsets gaze distractedly 

past me, performing for an

audience they no longer

recognize.

Oh summer! I whisper;

You can go.

Wander slowly into

gentler temperatures, blurring

edges — I won't forget you!

Just under my skin, its

warmth; borrowed energy

from distant suns 

makes me dream

yellow.

I Think

I think he still knows strawberries are

red and lemons are sour.

Tell me your name, he says, and I am

daughter, mother, grandchild.

Even clouds disappear, I think, though 

they fill up the horizon.

Look at the sky! Are we seeing 

the same thing or is the fabric

of knowing stretched and tearing?

It isn’t that easy, I think, and we both wonder,

Why are you doing this?

The Basement 

On the third step, 

I lowered myself into cave coolness. 

Dirt and disuse  

a mother’s lap to  

stare from.

Obsolescence, silence; 

domestic life once  

removed. 

I didn’t expect 

to feel so at 

home. 

Crosswalk 

Next to the tin can bouquets  

and makeshift crosses, 

they installed a crosswalk with  

blinking lights. 

All of us, 

with our busy days, 

speeding and swerving  

can’t pay attention;

even notice 

an elderly gentleman 

under the yellow flashes;

faint but insistent in the morning angle 

of the sun,

his white comb-over fluttering limply — 

a forgotten handkerchief on a  

clothesline. 

But today,  

swooping down the hill 

I see the illumination;

functional  

for the first time.

Straight ahead, 

coming swiftly toward me,

the oversized truck signaling right, 

a small blue car behind hooking  

anxiously around, heading toward the  

center

where the faded figure 

advances slowly

with vacant eyes towards the 

little altars 

on the other side  

of the street. 

The driver of the blue car 

with her busy day, 

speeding and swerving

can’t pay attention; 

even notice,

but a piercing horn 

pulsing under my palm calls, 

Attention! 

all of us, 

with our busy days, 

our speeding and swerving —

Pay attention!

Suddenly,  

we notice each other 

in this moment  

of our fragile existence 

together.