Friend, come here and touch my hem.
You be the wind, I’ll be the hollow thing singing.
I’m falling in love with every arm hair
on every rider on this machine.
The man in tube socks, ball-capped,
reminds me of my father. How someday
I’ll miss the old bastard (who I look
more like each night). Tonight, I’m screwed up
at the line’s end and I crave a better way to say
I’m hopeless. I’m lead at midnight. Tonight, I want
paper, all the banjo strings in the world.
I swing around the rusted
bus stop pole. Instead of home, I float
into the pub, alone. She pours me Guinness.
It takes the time it takes. Something in that
bitter darkness reminds me
of myself, reminds me of the someday
I no longer want to fear.
Kamal E. Kimball is a Pushcart-nominated poet currently living in central Ohio. On the editorial team for Muzzle Magazine, her work has been published in JuxtaProse, Juked, Rattle, Phoebe, Tahoma Literary Review, Hobart, Sundog Lit, Bone Parade, Kaaterskill Basin Literary Journal, Forklift Ohio, and elsewhere. She has served as a guest judge for Writers Digest and taught poetry classes at OSU, University of Cincinnati, Chase Public, and in a variety of community settings.
She is a member of the Ohio Poetry Association and completed her MFA in Poetry at The Ohio State University in 2021. She works in Communications at a local food pantry and continues to teach English coursework at the college level.
Contact her via e-mail at kekimba@gmail.com
Follow her on Twitter @kamalkimball and on IG at kamal_e_kimball
