My cramped home made of oyster shells on the shore of the Hudson which by its smell is nothing like the Aegean
is where I burst forth from a tangled womb-pink patch of spherical crustaceans like a god's awful migraine or cum
seeping onto the shoreline like oil-spillage after castration occurred as a catapult in another world's all too similar male sky
and is also the first vantage point from which I spotted a veiled woman wandering solitary with her lute leaving leaden trails of love
in the mutable canvas of sand near where the cliffs jutted out like Olympic runners over that Hudson which had discarded me
and I swear she looked back and saw with eyes of the grayest iron my emergence for when I finally crawled naked and nubile
to where her half shadow still warmed the spot I could clearly discern my name done in grooves and tears shouting a song
in the key of violence which is birth and to the tune of all else which is desire and I pressed my fingers there to feel this new me
vowing then I would never forget such poetry
kris t kahn's work has been published or is forthcoming in numerous journals, including The Cortland review, Samsara Quarterly, 42opus, 2River View, The Absinthe Literary Review, Rattle, and The Sulphur River Literary Review. His third chapbook, Arcana, was recently published by Little Poem Press. Arguing with the Troubadour, his first full-length collection, was short-listed for the 2003 Spokane Prize in Poetry and is available at most online booksellers. Originally from New Jersey, kris now lives in the United Kingdom, where he is conducting postgraduate work in the fields of literature and gender. He was recently nominated for his first Pushcart Prize. For more information, visit his website at http://kristkahn.net.
