Guy Kettelhack has authored, co-authored or contributed to more than 30 nonfiction books. His poetry has appeared in over 25 print and online journals, including Van Gogh’s Ear, Melic Review, New Pleiades, Malleable Jangle, WORM 33, Das Alchymist Poetry Review, the PK list, The Rose & Thorn, Heretics & Half-Lives, Desert Moon Review, Hiss Quarterly, Juked, Anon, Umbrella Journal, Mississippi Crow and The Chimaera. He lives in NYC.
Spring 2009
Table of Contents - Vol. V, No. 1
Poetry Interview Translations Fiction Book Reviews
Guy Kettelhack
Rune
I want the nineteenth century today –
to whirl the globe of time back, say,
one-hundred-thirty years – 1879’s soft,
careful and precise locutions – a fantasy
and sway to which my mind gives play
when winter light is like it is right now: before
it makes another shy diffusely glowing bow
into the evening – Emily Dickinson, 48,
and Henry James at 35, arrive – appositely
at my desk for ghostly tea, but each quite
quickly takes an interest in the other – not
in me: Henry’s gray and Emily’s dark sherry
eyes inspect their captive prey and prize –
dispassionate, direct – as if they each
were insect specimens; I want to waft
my deftest sweetest clauses for them
into meaning – elegant and filigreed,
but simple as the simplest human breath –
I want the bliss of thinking I might get their
blessing – but they’re too bewildered by
each other to address another being – dusk
slowly swallows both – and I’m back here
one-hundred-thirty years beyond the hush
of their improbable encounter and existence.
Cell phone shocks the air: a friend calls:
have to meet him soon. I trudge into the cold
Manhattan evening: half-moon – whispered
utterance – etched, peculiar as a rune.
© Guy Kettelhack
