kathleen hellen / poem

after moonshine whetted our enjambment

strings twist

the riddle in the fiddling: how little it took.

a poem in a letter that slipped from a book.

lines that read me

as much as i read them.

if only you were better.

if only i knew better.

did we rhyme?

did we wrongful?

you packed up the guitar.

i thought you were a coward.

mountain hairpin waiting at the volta.

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Kathleen Hellen’s debut collection Umberto’s Night won the poetry prize from Washington Writers’ Publishing House. She is the author of The Only Country Was the Color of My Skin, Meet Me at the Bottom, and two chapbooks. Hellen’s awards include prizes from the H.O.W. Journal and Washington Square Review. Her poems have appeared in Lammergeier Magazine, PERMAfrost, SWWIM, The Shore, Willawaw Journal, and elsewhere.