h o m e........

p a s t   i s s u e s....

s u b m i s s i o n s....

l i n k s

KAREN HOLMAN

DEAR AIR

On lines from Distant Days by Benjamin Foster and Joy of Man’s Desiring by Jean Giono


The dear air struts the streets like a peddler (cat with its tail straight up) and I grab its 
elbow.  I am as beautiful as day and bring good luck to everyone. And they know it. The 
hair on my arms and legs is standing straight up and I have a stitch in my side. We’re a 
dashing (to the river of the horizon, silver shimmer.) couple. I meet the air’s that is also in 
flux. cousins and sisters and suitors, am introduced all around, then everyone starts 
talking at once. I’m only just beginning to speak the language and they laugh at my 
perplexity. I’m a friend of the bride and the groom and love all the sequins and bouquets. 
I made my beau get me have a gardenia corsage for my wrist and all the relatives admire 
how dressy it makes the air wafting like chatter and I have to agree. I’m keeping my joy 
with me, right now, and there was almost a second, yes there was, when I believed that 
this time I could.

BECAUSE I SAY SO

Be a ghost! Or so it would seem. It will precipitate.  Either eager or hesitant to.  It will 
hallucinate. Because. Visitation. Or rather. I will also wake. So I bless. Besides. Is it 
blind? Or so they say. Unblinking. As a pane. In reference to. As in milk. Besides. 
Tincture. 

A letter retrieves. So to speak. Fulsome, as it happens. It drops. Vacuum. Ne’er-do-well. 
In suspension. And so forth. Remind me. Twelve and twenty. Who can say? Titillate 
multiplication. And then some. Meanwhile, by the way. It stutters. Will it need? 
Heirloom.

Thank you. Set forth. Ascending in all likelihood. Fight, please. So that. It grasps. In 
perpetuity. Anyways, did you really? We succumb. Stirring constantly. The Voice. By 
the way. No, no, no! Forget all this. I am afraid.

I ghosted myself to cling to her, airy as a dust bunny, light as a zygote, 
flammable as a silo. I caught on the mesh and all my colors turned gray.
 
She whisked me away, my succubus bits successfully lit 
in the corners and tangled with the cat fur, her black curls. 

Every day is laundry day. I am erudite, absorbed in
the Philosophy of Colander, Cheesecloth, Grater, Cage.

CONCLUDING HIS GLISTENING INTERVIEW