Interior Life

POETRY / $5.00

Filled with moments of intense transformation, these poems explore that part of life which exists between words, exposing a lush and sometimes contradictory world.

"As Katharyn Grant knows, and demonstrates so delicately in these poems, the interior life is only accessible through appearances, which are treacherous. But most treacherous of all is the fact that sometimes things are what they seem: "She is buried behind the Conoco station / small life lingers so quiet.” This is a small book full of large gestures, both visual and verbal—and it seems appropriate that it uses color so frighteningly: "Swimming in mid air / streaks of purple in cyclone weather.”

INTERIOR LIFE

Bin Ramke, author of Theory of Mind: New and Selected Poems

"Vivid language explodes images that will stay with you, accompanied by the writer’s own gorgeous photographs and paintings.”

Kona Morris, Co-Founder and Editor of Fast Forward Press

Katharyn Grant M O N K E Y P U Z Z L E P R E S S . C O M

INTERIOR LIFE

Katharyn Grant

Monkey Puzzle Press Boulder, Colorado

Copyright Š 2011 by Katharyn Grant

All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or re- produced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief excerpts.

Cover Art Self Portrait of Author, reflected in pitcher

Photos and Artwork Katharyn Grant

"The Understudy� reprinted from Fast Forward: The Mix Tape, published by Fast Forward Press (2010) and copyright (2010) Katharyn Grant.

M o n ke y P u z z l e P r e s s PO Box 20804 Boulder, CO 80308

m o n ke y p u z z l e p r e s s . c o m

TABLE OF CONTENTS Interior Life

1

Euphoric Dissolution

2

Dry and White

4

Ghosts

5

The Understudy

6

Fireworks

8

Manifestations

9

Stone

10

Love I & Love II

11

Easter

12

For the First Time You Were Alone

14

Thieves

16

Shadow Lake

19

Epiphany, a Constellation

22

Bedtime I

24

Bedtime II & Bedime III

25

Eulogy I & Eulogy II

26

At the Water’s Edge

28

About the Author

INTERIOR LIFE

INTERIOR LIFE Recall blueprints set down in the cells father mother grandmother a kaleidoscope of ghosts And memories are nursery rhymes replaced note by note with delicate replicas that reinvent us Colored light shatters projected onto the screen of deliberate gazing but beyond the cherry fence and the believable sky look things contain their secret opposite Pulling up to a wide intersection vertigo Your car coasts across dark pavement drenched with rain-wet reflection A red stoplight shines forming thin streams red in street water A single blaring siren cuts through soundless darkness

1

Katharyn Grant

EUPHORIC DISSOLUTION Make me small I begged small enough to fit into the mouth of my mother that huge fish who protects her young by eating them Form only in resonance moving tenderly through those ethereal bodies of light and sound As yielding as soil as air as water, as water what I will call myself when I have peeled away birthdays like bark I will no more gaze longingly at migrations of birds I will no longer reach towards the silent flight in all things

2

INTERIOR LIFE

3

Katharyn Grant

DRY AND WHITE I carry bones in a bucket collar cheek a child a fragment I collect them in the dry backyard grass cover them with honey and feed them to the chickens I wear a cowboy hat and sweep dried leaves behind me Disguises trailer homes and wire fences bloom in unreal evening But those bones for forecasting I set aside in the sun and in the rain and light and whistle them clean

4

INTERIOR LIFE

GHOSTS

Circumstance Landscape A body of water The dead walk among us Living on salt Inhabiting the eyes

5

Katharyn Grant

AT THE WATER’S EDGE Freedom is an owl that moves as quickly and as quietly as death, seeing it’s prey in darkness, swooping down with razor sharp precision.

I dreamt my bones were hollow as the bones of finches, meadowlarks, talon-wielding hawks.

I took flight, as in the germination of a thought, separate, indivisible and whole as the nucleus of an atom.

With each new thought I am multiplying exponentially, selves destined now to wander, air born, noiseless, but for the sound of wings beating against air. Perhaps this is what is meant by karma.

Though bloodless, aware, I harness the wind with clean deliberation.

28

INTERIOR LIFE

29

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Katharyn Grant is currently directing and starring in her first feature length film The Mighty King of Love, based out of Denver, Colorado. Her short films have appeared on IFC (Independent Film Channel) and various film festivals. She’s performed internationally with Armed Forces Entertainment. Her written work has appeared in The Orange Coast Review, Foothills Magazine, Fast Forward Volume II, Fast Forward: The Mix Tape, and Monkey Puzzle.

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POETRY / $5.00 Filled with moments of intense transformation, these poems explore that part of life which exists between words, exposing a lush and sometimes contradictory world.

“As Katharyn Grant knows, and demonstrates so delicately in these poems, the interior life is only accessible through appearances, which are treacherous. But most treacherous of all is the fact that sometimes things are what they seem: ‘She is buried behind the Conoco station / small life lingers so quiet.’ This is a small book full of large gestures, both visual and verbal—and it seems appropriate that it uses color so frighteningly: ‘Swimming in mid air / streaks of purple in cyclone weather.’”

INTERIOR LIFE

Bin Ramke, author of Theory of Mind: New and Selected Poems

“Very striking imagery and rich language.”

Orange Coast Review “Vivid language explodes images that will stay with you, accompanied by the writer’s own gorgeous photographs and paintings.”

Kona Morris, Co-Founder and Editor of Fast Forward Press

Katharyn Grant M O N K E Y P U Z Z L E P R E S S . C O M