Issue 11
Summer 2002
Kelley White
http://www.geocities.com/kelleywhitemd/
was born and raised in New Hampshire, have degrees from Dartmouth College and Harvard Medical School, and have been a pediatrician in inner-city Philadelphia for the past twenty years. I write to survive. I started sending work a year and a half ago with very modest goals (I hoped to have a half dozen poems published by my fiftieth birthday in 2004) but have had somewhat surprising success, with well over 250 poems accepted or published by more than one hundred journals including American Writing, The Café Review, Feminist Studies, and most recently, Whiskey Island Magazine and Rattle. A book of my "medical" poems, The Patient Presents, has been published this month by The People’s Press in Baltimore and a chapbook of very different material, "I am going to walk toward the sanctuary," will be published this summer by Nepenthe Books/Via Dolorosa Press. I received a Pushcart nomination for an experimental piece (from Gravity Presses) in 2000, my first year of submission. My children and I are shocked by this success.
Baby Girl Blues
Mama walking on the porchrail
patting that baby in her arms.
Little girl walking that porchrail
with a baby in her arms.
Shame to see that little sister
done used up all her precious charms.
Had me a doll baby,
I carried her all around.
Had a little doll baby,
I carried all around,
but I never got it right you know,
I had her head just hanging down.
I had a little bulldog.
Walked him on a silver chain.
I had me a little bulldog.
Kept him on a silver chain.
Well he broke that chain one morning.
Things ain't never been the same.
Loved me a pretty boy.
Gave him all my dollars and sense.
I loved that pretty boy,
gave him all my dollars and my sense.
He left me for a new girl
after all my money got spent.
I'm just a stove with broken burners
sitting out in the street.
A little stove with broken burners
thrown out in the street.
You could hammer me a little.
Cook yourself something good to eat.If you gave me another chance
I would welcome a hand
on the railing. I would welcome
a tramp on the walk. I would
sing out of tune at the doorbell's loud
purr and dance at a stranger's
rebuke. I would carry my grief
like a string-bag of worms
to the closet behind your back stairs
and lock it inside where
the angry moths hide and
play rat-a-tat-tat with their chairs.Limit
He has been caught in a squall
that raises like angry men the trees
around the river and wipes his hair
into a hollowed bank. Man that he is
he makes use of the time-while darkness
signals a neverending flood he counts flies-
248 on a hat band-726 on a vest-1320
in clasped metal envelopes folded in
a pocket. The storm lifts. He builds
a fire. He redoes the count while his
clothes dry. Goes home with his limit.Liver
My boy is an old old man,
grizzled, with a white puppy
in liver spotted hands.Trumped Up
I fight you for time and for space,
for my rhythm, my cadence, my pace;
I could pull from my pocket this ace-
this is my home, not really your place,
my curtains, my dustballs, my lace-
I fight you for time and for space;
out words lack in kindness, no grace-
eyes wander, tongues click, fingers race-
I would pull from my pocket this ace,
this is my home, not really your place-
you could go and not leave any trace-
I fight you for time and for space;
more than true, I could soon you erase
and my life, from yours, I could unlace,
I should pull from my pocket this ace
when you lean close, a flinching embrace,
soul guarded, each cold muscle braced.
I fight you for time and for space.
I will pull from my pocket this ace.