Karen Benke -- karen@karenbenke.com
website:  http://www.karenbenke.com


Karen Benke is the author of a chapbook, Sister (Conflu:X Press, 2004). Her poems have appeared in various anthologies and literary magazines, including Ploughshares, Poetry East, Hawaii Pacific Review, and online at Poetry Daily. A poet-teacher for many years,she holds a Masters level certificate in Intuition Medicine, leads Writing Circles, and maintains an active yoga practice while co-leading yoga and writing workshops. She lives in Mill Valley, California, with her husband and son. Visit her at www.karenbenke.com

First Poem For the Cat

He asks to go out, so I open the door.
He looks up at me but does not move.
OK then, I say, and close the door.
A minute later, he asks again.
But you don’t want to go out there, I say.
It’s cold, remember?
Don’t tell me what I want is the look he speaks.
Turning away, white whiskers brush past.
And so it goes—
The same game everyday,
our shared karma.

(First published in Poetry East)

During Poetry

I sit next to the blue-hooded boy who tells me he’s Just Matt.
And when I ask if he’s going to write, he just sits there, his face hard,
pieces of dried grass clinging to a dirty pant leg while he draws
dark circles across the bottom half of the lined paper in front of him.
The Nothing, he calls it, explaining there isn’t anything inside
his imagination today: no dogs, no trees, not even the storm
that passed through his backyard the night before, tipping over
the trash bins his mom put out too early in the week, the ones
his dad yelled at her for, while Matt stayed upstairs with his brother.
This morning, his mom yelled at him—he was going to be late
for school, and if she told him once she told him a hundred times.
She didn’t have time for this today; she didn’t want to hear
another word out of him. Nothing. You got that?

(First published in North Central Review)

 

A Child Wakes in the Middle of the Night

Standing at my bed he whispers, Mama,
then grips my hand, explaining
You have to come quick—Right now.
It’s important, he says, leading me out the back door,
wind cartwheeling through wet grass
where he says I must go to help him
find the rock his father gave him, the one he dropped
into the make-believe pond he was fishing,
moonlight spilling into the redwoods
where I find myself wrapped in a white robe,
each of my tired uh-huhs confirming his belief
in the invisible world he insists I travel—
his young life overgrown with curiosity, Blackbird’s flight
a shadow I pray will protect him, as he finds his way
through the miles of stories he loves—
Not from a book, from your mouth, he demands,
asking if I’ll tell him how, when I was little
and couldn’t sleep, my mama let me retrace my steps
through a rainy garden, to find what I thought I had lost.

First published in Poetry East
(Winner of the American Pen Women 2004 Soul-Making Literary Award)

 

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