Here is a link to three of my poems published in Young Ravens Literary Review, and I am also including the poems here.

http://www.youngravensliteraryreview.org/karen-poppy.htm

The Flower

It’s too late.
Last night’s storm
Tore flower
Head from stem,
Wind lifting
It skyward,
A white,
Multi-petalled
Tumble down,
A spiraling star,
Strewed across
Every inch
It seems
Of garden floor.

I had planned
To photograph it,
This flower,
But thought how
Much prettier
It would look
Following the rains.
Freshened, wet,
And glistening.

Violence doesn’t lie.
Nor does it hesitate.
It tears apart
The gentlest
Things, the most
Beautiful things.
It doesn’t wait
Until after tomorrow.

A few petals
Still clump together,
Reaching upward
From wet earth,
Like a dying child’s hand.

 

 

Prayer

Clear all scars from my body.
Make me a transparent beacon,
Bright with light. Be gone
All loneliness, the absence of salt,
My tongue’s empty grasp.
The word is redundancy.

Freed from you, I am still weighted
to the earth.

Michelangelo knew, and I, I’ve known
All these years: we are chained here
To the rock. We climb each
commandment
From this inverted mountain. We sing
Up our words and forget that clarity
Is praise. Smooth me to a weightless quartz.
I beg to become less that I know.

 

 

After Winter

No country closer
Than the tulips
Before me.
I am lucky.

No sound nearer
Than the warm air.
Just you there.
Silent.
Filled with sun.

Then you open.
Heat dazzles
Each of you.
One by one.
Visitor.
Open air.
Another season.

No red fury.
No snowed-in pain.
Just you, again.

Yellow tipped,
You bloom.
Flourish
Out of love
For yourselves.

There is love
Enough
For me.

Spring
Cannot live
In just one color.