Two Poems by Karen George
What You Dread; What You Saved
Poems by Karen George
What You Dread
Memory. A chain
of collected jewels.
Endows, sings
your immense sadness.
Listen, use sudden beauty—
a soft kiss—to break
yourself against.
~ Found poem composed/modified from a list of words on p. 230 of "The Diary of Frida Kahlo," translated by Barbara Crow de Toledo and Ricardo Pohlenz
What You Saved
Calendars from 1950,
two years before my birth,
blueprints of homes, names
of neighbors' dogs penned
on a used envelope,
news accounts
of births, fires,
deaths. A 2 x 12 inch
cardboard strip scrawled
with I may of loved you
but I don't like you at all now,—
a comma after now
as if mulling over more.
I hope you never
handed this note
to anyone,
or they to you—
missive shaped
like a ruler
you might use to limn
a straight line, or
rap someone's knuckles.
Karen George is author of five chapbooks, and two poetry collections from Dos Madres Press: Swim Your Way Back (2014) and A Map and One Year (2018). She has appeared or is forthcoming in South Dakota Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Adirondack Review, Louisville Review, Naugatuck River Review, SWWIM, and Thimble Magazine. She reviews poetry and interviews poets at Poetry Matters, and is co-founder and fiction editor of the online journal, Waypoints. Visit her website for further information.
Inquiry
Thoughts on What You Dread, provided by the poet:
I wrote this poem shortly after my collection of found poems “A Map an One Year” was published, and while I was beginning a collection inspired by the art and lives of Frida Kahlo, Georgia O’Keeffe, and Emily Carr--immersed in their paintings, biographies, and letters. The impetus of this particular poem was a list of random words I found in The Diary of Frida Kahlo. The words memory and beauty jumped out at me, reminding me about how after the loss of a loved one, beauty and memories are both blessings and torture, depending on the stage of your grief. I’ve been twice widowed, and I found that I had to immerse myself in memories and beauty such as art, literature, and music, visiting gardens and museums, even if they intensified my sadness. After my second husband died during the spectacular beauty of fall leaves, that beauty soothed me and pulled me deeper into grief, partly because my husband and I loved to take rides and hike during that time of the year. The beauty felt like an affront, almost obscene, which is of course both ridiculous and yet exactly how I felt. I’ve always believed that beauty and sadness were inextricably tangled.
Have beauty and/or memories helped you after the loss of a loved one, or at some other difficult time in your life? Make a list of those memories/interactions with beauty. Contemplate and/or write about one or more of those experiences, perhaps incorporating how they made you feel then versus now.
Thoughts on What You Saved, provided by the poet:
This poem was inspired by the process of emptying out my grandmother’s house after she died. There were so many things I kept, to later go through, and decide what I would save. I became fascinated by what people keep over the years, and their reasons for holding onto those specific items. Recently, going through a box of items saved from her house, I found the 12 x 12 inch cardboard strip described in my poem. My grandmother had a complicated relationship with my mother and her sister. I didn’t know whether my grandmother wrote the note, or received it from someone else. Either possibility broke my heart thinking about the hurt of the note’s writer and whoever they gave the note to. Or had it never been given to anyone after all?
Have you ever emptied out a loved one’s house after their death? Have you found items that intrigued or affected you in some way? Are you saving items yourself that whoever eventually empties your home might wonder about? Write about either of those; see what you uncover about yourself and/or the person whose house you packed up.