Tag Archives: Kansas Poets

Ambidextrous by Denise Low

Ambidextrous
 

Let me kiss you with my left lip and my right
            open my right labium and the left.
 
Let my left eye solve quadratic equations
            and my right eye parse Picasso.
 
Let me sign the check upside down with my right hand
            rightside up with my left.
 
Let me read traffic signs blindfolded.
            No, just kidding. Let me brake left-footed or right.
 
Let me track two rabbits to the compost pile
            Let me aim left-eyed and shoot right-handed.
 
Let me watch sunrise and offer tobacco smoke.
            Let me offer tobacco smoke at moonrise.

9780990804758Denise Low, Kansas Poet Laureate 2007-09, won a Red Mountain Press Award for Shadow Light. Other books include Jackalope and a memoir, The Turtle’s Beating Heart (Univ. of Nebraska). At Haskell Indian Nations Univ. she founded the creative writing program. She teaches for Baker Univ. and lives on Tsuno Mountain. www.deniselow.net

A Classification of Poets by Roy Beckemeyer

All those poets, with their delicate
faces, the rote way I relegate
their taut verses : Alluvial traces,
Marsupial purses, Tightly coiled cases.

Their animal hands, their angelic minds,
the various cants of their labored lines.
I draw from this strange sonnet’s brevity
a taxonomic range of verse levity.

Roy Beckemeyer, from Wichita, Kansas has recently published in The Midwest Quarterly, The North Dakota Quarterly, Nebo, Straylight, and The Bluest Aye. His debut collection of poetry, Music I Once Could Dance To is available from Coal City Press.