Rooftop Poetry Club - Karlen Chase

Karlen Chase

Bio:
Karlen Chase is a serial laborer and recovering vagabond who has recently returned to New York State from a stint out west. She earned her Master of Fine Arts in writing at Vermont College and is currently enrolled in the Master of Library Science program at University at Buffalo. Her publications include Spreading Stars, a chapbook of her poems, and a poem in the Catskill Mountain Region Guide. She writes poetry, fiction, and a cappella blues songs.

Poems:

Deck

The wood soaked up the stain.
Dry and solid
it soaked.
She picked out the stain
brown of honey
gold and sticky.
She
on her knees
knees on the solid wood
her arms muscled
and gold
sticky with stain and sweat.
Gnats flew to the salt.
They bit,
she worked,
her arms
moving like dancers,
wrist and brush in a gavotte
on wood
old and solid,
the gnats
biting into her salt
and sweetness.

Kickshaws of Love

He was her Boy Blue
(that was her pet name for him).
The blonde boy
with thin, sinuous arms
cried out of blue eyes
when she asked him to leave.

Weeks passed.
She sipped coffee
alone in her kitchen
and listened to talk radio
while she dressed for work.

While chopping onions
one Sunday morning,
her vision blurred
by onion tears,
she cut her finger.

Sucking on the wound,
she shuffled to the bathroom
for a Band-Aid.
The girl opened the linen closet door,
salty blood on her tongue,
and there,
next to the box of Band-Aids
and expired ointment
were his tools:
a level with yellow liquid,
his hammer with battered handle and dented claw,
pliers with blue, rubber handles,
the hack-saw with the rusty blade.
She touched the blade
with her uncut fingers,
the wounded one
in her mouth
like a pacifier.
Some of the tools were hers,
had mixed in during the time
they lived together.
The ratchet set,
wire cutters,
her own hammer—
all her tools were shiny.
She had bought them
for specific jobs.
His were rusty and worn,
inherited.

She closed the door,
forgot about the Band-Aid,
went back to her onions.
She whisked eggs
and started a list
in her head.

The yellow hardhat
on the top right shelf
of her coat closet,
from his stint as a plumber’s apprentice.
She had had to rub
the stubborn knots out of his narrow back
every night when he got home
from that job.

A jar made of coils of clay
fired, then painted olive green and brown.
It sat on her wide desk
holding pens and pencils.
It’s job had not changed.

Holes—
in the living room
where he had proudly hung
his mirror cognac sign,
saying,
“Now it looks like a man
might live here.”

Holes—
in the kitchen
where he had hung
kitschy 70’s blinds.

A patch of missing plaster
in the bathroom
where she had attempted
to rip off
the toothbrush holder
he had stuck there.

Orange and blue in the bedroom—
a painting he had presented
to her one night when she
got home from work.
He rubbed her feet,
they shared a beer
and looked at his masterpiece
together.
Orange exploding into blue.

These are not the things
she misses about him.
These are just the things
she will make a part
of her home.
She will leave the holes
and take the rest with her
when she moves.
She will clean the tools,
make them hers.
Maybe she will plant
a cactus in the yellow hardhat.
She will fill the clay jar
with chopsticks.
The painting will hang on a future
bedroom wall,
bottom right corner curling up.
She won’t frame it, make it flat.
Because these things,
they are better than photos.