Author: katkarney

I saw a study that reading decreases anxiety. It certainly works well when you are small and have limited say in the goings-on of a boisterous household. Take a book, climb a tree. Your afternoon is set. Adults won’t get mad at you for dissociatively reading as a response to stress and sensory overload until you’re much older.

Adults won’t climb up to detangle your spindly legs from the equally thin upper branches. They can call up and shake their heads in exasperation, but they have no real sway. If you hang by your knees and read upside down to further illustrate your unconcern, they will retreat into the house. They are (figuratively and literally) beneath you, and they know it.

There is one adult in the precarious forest of adolescence that always encouraged, never dissuaded. Never made me feel that I was wrong for my shyness. For retreating into the written word.

Grandma understands the peace in being well-read. Silencing the mind. She herself quiet but always thoughtful. Always a bit worried. Grandma who handily kicks my ass in every game of Scrabble we’ve ever played. Grandma who prays the rosary while her loved ones drive long distances. Grandma, the sweetest person I have ever met.

During my last visit to her house, I glanced out of her back window at the birds flitting among the evergreens.

“Are the cardinals redder than anyone remembers?” I didn’t know if it was a trick of light or the misperception of my aging eyes. My tired brain.

“When cardinals have abundant access to red berries it pigments their feathers a deeper hue. I saw that in one of the baby’s books about birds.” Lou offered.

Or maybe it was because those birds, near the love of the kindest woman I have known, also radiated. As I felt brighter and more kind among those fruits of her virtue.

I have not been able to easily transition into the past tense when referring to Grandma after her passing.

The cardinals in Cleveland forage seeds from the neighborhood feeders. They have a dustier hue that complements the sturdy brick houses.

It seems like she must still be there, too. Reading in her house in the forest. It seems like she must be everywhere.

Instead of doomscrolling at night, I decided 2024 would be my year to read all of Shakespeare’s thirty-seven plays.  I wanted to understand and appreciate the tragedies & comedies better, outside of the forced learning of academia.

The first step was to unlearn what I retained from my English teachers in public high school. Admittedly, that wasn’t much. The teachers pulled off amazing and ambitious lesson plans with limited funding. Junior year focused on Old English and Middle English works. As a senior, I took the AP English class that counted for college credit. We started with Shakespearean sonnets and plays and ended with contemporary short stories.

Mr. A was eager for us to learn. Shakespeare-inspired movies were all the rage during the Y2K era (10 Things I Hate About You, O, Romeo+Juliet), and I respected that he didn’t attempt to use their pop culture moment as a crutch. No, Mr. A was old school. He distributed unannotated versions of the plays and had us read aloud and discuss what it meant.  He studied our faces, perched cross-legged on a stool at the front of the class, impatiently flipping the bangs of his feathered mullet.  We were not picking up on the complex wordplay and entendre that the Elizabethan theatergoers prized.

He once asked for my interpretation of the scene that contains Hamlet’s rejection of Ophelia. I had no clue how to respond. The fact that Shakespeare didn’t come naturally to me bruised my gifted-kid ego. I wanted to like Shakespeare for the sake of the disappointed teacher, but I didn’t. I wanted to be smart because people told me I was, but it never felt true.  I’d always read at an advanced level and had a near-photographic retention of the written word, but none of that matters if you don’t’ “get” what you’re reading.

The comic elements didn’t hit for me. (Not even the penis jokes!) The Tragedies seemed flat. (Who was more morose and bitchy, Hamlet or a 17-year-old girl with PMDD?)  I didn’t find the history of England’s kings particularly engaging. I certainly didn’t want to hear about Richard the Ugly-MF’ing-III while struggling with body dysmorphia.

It was Richard III that ultimately made me declare to Mr. A that I did not like Shakespeare. Mr A. touched his bangs and stared with calm resignation at the ceiling. “Ok, but just give it a chance sometime later. It’s important to go back and revisit things at different stages of your life.”

Collegiate snobbery of English Lit departments killed any remnant of Shakespearean interest in my twenties. In 2012 they discovered Richard III’s remains while building a carpark in Leicester. He probably wasn’t deformed as the Elizabethan play suggested, just a moderate case of scoliosis. When you’re in power, you control what information is passed on.  I remember briefly thinking “Yeah, well, screw that guy, anyway!” when his reburial showed up on the news.

I read Richard III last out of all the 37 plays. I enjoyed it. I might’ve liked it the whole time, if not constantly being told that I must. If not expected to publicly prove something.

I hope somewhere out there, Mr. A knows that I am grateful for his attempt to think critically, be passionate, and give things another shot.

I hope if there are any people-pleasers out there trying to make something work for the sake of others, maybe it doesn’t have to.  Maybe let it sit for a bit.

Decades, even.

There’s always time to unearth it and craft a new narrative later.

tie the tie
put on the white gloves

straighten one
then, the other

i am ok
i belong

lie the lie
one, then the other

the story of the retired fire horse
who always ran back
to the station
upon hearing the bell

is always told as a wry anecdote
with humorous wonder about
what goes on in the equine mind

there was likely harsh training if he was not present
perhaps he tasted fear and singed flesh upon the air

what is our own sense of duty by comparison?
what of our own routines?
what of our own horrors, clanging about
our jumbled brains?

It’s time for the conscious cares of the day to fade
The fan thrums cool against our skin.
I smooth my braid against the curve of my neck.

I adjust my Invisalign retainer and lisp I’m scared.
Perhaps ‘aware’ is a better term. That death is inevitable.
(The certainty grips my heart with a chill that may as well be fear.)

What happens to us when the component parts of our existence fall away?
The heart and the hair and the skin and the teeth of it? The conscious and rational mind?

I turn to your side of the bed but
you’re one step ahead, &
already asleep.

My fingertips dig
into the rough, teal cover
of an Everyman’s Library
copy of Return of the Native.

A meager ledge, a final attempt
to seize the thread of humanity
by grasping at the words
we weave.

I have sat many seasons
re-reading the same book,
re-treading the same descriptions
of wild heath.

Our actions are less permanent.
Our lives escape clean narration.
Language stretches
beyond our sorrows.

I. SOMNAMBULISM
i once convinced you the house was on fire
and you slept-walked to the door with the dog in your arms
attempting to usher me away from the flames that only existed in our shared subconscious

II. SLEEP TERRORS
i woke to your hand around my throat

a cool room
the bed on the floor surrounded with
cans, receipts, dirty clothes, and spare change

i gazed at the ceiling light fixture
a clear globe striated like a candy dish
with a dead fly trapped inside, slightly off-center

a map of the US instead of a headboard
glimpses of town names I’d never heard of
tried to envision the places and people

i found our city on the map
and trusted
the terror would pass

04-02-2019
Abattoir is just a fancy word for slaughterhouse

My face is red with acne, as we head to the Pacific
Ohio. Fucking Ohio! The abattoir of my dreams!
I’m driving as far away from you as possible, Fucker.

Some DJ from LA is texting me. He sounds nice on the phone.
He owns the desert cabin we stayed in, wants to meet.
I don’t want to know any different, so I won’t.

I leave a poem on the table. He left me a voicemail.
I don’t think anybody ever wrote him a poem before.