We were frightened kites
flying into pockets of pain.
Kent State and Watergate
were our Rorschach ink blots.
Bored monsters fought wars.
Rogues roamed the earth.
The bad guys, cheerful
cheaters, won the game.
Quarrels, indiscretions,
vexations, like industrious
rabbits, multiplied, set up
house, behind closed doors.
But in Harvard Square, playing
chess near the bearded man
reciting “to be or not to be,”
all things on heaven and earth
became cappuccino. Our talisman
against the impending storm.
Kathi Wolfe’s poems have appeared in Gargoyle, Harrington Lesbian Fiction Quarterly, Kaleidoscope Magazine, Disability Studies, and The Christian Century. Moon Pie Press, a fine-letter press in Ottawa, published a limited edition chapbook of her poems titled, SURREALISM BEFORE 10 AM. In February 2004, she completed a poetry residency at Vermont Studio Center in Johnson, Vt.
