The Wardrobe's Best Dressed: Kathleen Kirk's "Interior Sculpture"

Red Umbrella

They say I leave at night
by the window of my tower,
hanging from a red umbrella…

I use it, they say, to set
fire to the forest. Descend
down a hope that colors

my life forever, my fate
seen only from afar.
From the ashes of a forest

come morels. From the ashes
of a hearth, a garden. From
the ashes of a fable—what?

They say a phoenix rises.
My hat slips down my face,
my hands in my lap, useless.

This selection comes from Kathleen Kirk’s book Interior Sculpture, available from Dancing Girl Press. Purchase your copy here!

Kathleen Kirk is the author of five poetry chapbooks, most recently Interior Sculpture: poems in the voice of Camille Claudel (Dancing Girl Press, 2014) and Nocturnes (Hyacinth Girl Press, 2012), with a sixth, The ABCs of Women’s Work, forthcoming from Red Bird in 2015. Her work appears in many journals, including Arsenic Lobster, Poetry East, Redheaded Stepchild, Stirring, and Wicked Alice. She is the poetry editor for Escape Into Life. The poems featured here were commissioned by Columbus Dance Theatre for the world premier of Claudel, a dance, theatre, and music collaboration. Kathleen blogs at her accidental blog, Wait! I Have a Blog?! http://kathleenkirkpoetry.blogspot.com/

Donna Vorreyer is the author of A House of Many Windows (Sundress Publications, 2013) as well as six chapbooks, most recently Encantado, a collaboration with artist Matt Kish from Redbird Chapbooks forthcoming in April. She is an assistant poetry editor for Extract(s), and her second collection is forthcoming from Sundress Publications in 2016.