Kelley White

Cleave

unto one another ‘til the cleaver
thunks into the blemished skin we share
and I am revealed in the pit of bone
the blade rebounds from inside you, stone

and you are broken. Embraced we are two
kinds of mineral. Our split from above
a crevice in ice, my granite grain through
braiding your Wissahickon schist, shoving,

cracking, rubbing sharp edged against the truth
of hardness, of your dry skin, that thick bark
harsh, oak or maple, scraping off
birch thin paper, sap sealing, healing both

in a new grafting, a scion, your dark
strange flower, my blossom, my seed-filled fruit.

---

Grave

That moment when gravity becomes repulsive
and you lift to watch your body from the ceiling bulb--
body,  empty husk, body,  only one life to climb
the spirit air, one shadow to shift and wait above--
See how she cries on the bed, see her two hands
lift to her mouth as if to pull the soul from her face,
but the soul does not hear, it has left her and lingers
with the eyes of the ancestors, each with a finger
to her lips as the man pulls up his trousers and walks
away

--
Kelley White has worked in inner city Philadelphia and rural New Hampshire. Her poems have appeared in Exquisite Corpse, Rattle and JAMA. Her recent books are TOXIC ENVIRONMENT (Boston Poet Press) and TWO BIRDS IN FLAME (Beech River Books.) She received a 2008 Pennsylvania Council on the Arts grant.