Kristen Henderson Quotes & Sayings

I offer a duo of free-range
monosyllabics: one being "wow" and the other being
"cool," often said in sequence, spoken without drawl.
Take them, leave them, or show me to the Dewer's-- — Kristen Henderson

Through a trick lighting technique
the skyline was made and faded
with the care of a pointillist -
maybe aiding us to think nothing was
missing. We traded verbs

about what was happening
in the metropolis, realizing,
in the scorched plum of dusk,
actual human infinity was occurring
on an island before us.... — Kristen Henderson

I dream
for an absentee and oft maligned
device - the accident-maker,
the soul-taker, my camera;
its factory guaranteed
third eye, without which I am duly dim
and memory denied. No pictures
for my contrived Arbus to declare,
excepting some stitch of Sexton
manages these sentences
of despair. — Kristen Henderson

Editors keep pushing
deadline strain while people sleep
on benches and subway grates;
a welter weight boxer dances
on the platform at 125th Street
station, commuters look unfazed... — Kristen Henderson

You think it's a game?
Unintelligible? Ha!
Envision no spoons.

This is serious.
It is a matter of joy
versus emptiness. — Kristen Henderson

There used to be trees in the untended park below the old married couple of windows in my living room. — Kristen Henderson

Sure, I watched the workmen come and lower large pieces of rotten sheetrock and lift new clean panels on a pulley
from that same window months ago, and I could have written then, but I must have sensed her coming, the smoker, so I waited. — Kristen Henderson

Who is so fancy, esoterica saves the day?
Who is the Yogi, Namaste? — Kristen Henderson

As a woman still,
without the right kind of mouth,
my tongue's of no use. — Kristen Henderson

The outfit, tight in places,
and loose in some, says as much
in the buttons as it does in cuffs. — Kristen Henderson

...you hold a poem
that functions half as personal
note and half as telescope
to the heights
awaiting us all. — Kristen Henderson

He may take long walks
in the raining dark
almost aimlessly
to a spot of soaked grass
in a neighbor's open field.
He's decided this is the place
for you and him to meet again. — Kristen Henderson

Time's relativity
is considered and abandoned,
for the more revelatory
experiences of starlight
in strands, and pearly
floors that span as far as
absolute compassion... — Kristen Henderson

Once lively peonies now
wind-weary, and ragged
at the edges, hang their heavy
crowns; rain on their backs,
one final act, before
detaching from the stem
and falling down. — Kristen Henderson

Would it be enough to rock on a stormless sea with each our separate memories tuned to the state of the sinking sun? — Kristen Henderson

How long before the eaves gave way
to the sky, or the bathroom floor
was jack-hammered to bone,
while the trees outside were left
to redirect the wind?

How quickly the den must have become more kitchen
and bedrooms lost their privacy. I see the books
we'd packed up and moved years ago

under a pile of fresh rubble, still sending off dust -
titles stunned to a babble
in gold leaf. — Kristen Henderson

If you knew you were
going to lose your memory
but you could choose five things
you'd never forget, what would they be -
a certain face, a taste, a scent,
a touch; how deep
in this, the middle
of your life? — Kristen Henderson

Good Poem

Sit,
lay down,
roll over,
here's
your treat. — Kristen Henderson

If in poetry court she was called
to testify on matters where
I was condemned to imprisonment: parking my ego
at a broken meter, line violations, forced rhyme,
dealing stanzaics to children, shooting
off my mouth, getting cute, for even this
latest attempt at verse, she would tell the whole truth,
she would admit from the pit
of her unsung brilliance,
from all of the paintings and poems
she herself has been making
and storing in the vast empire of her
singing soul, your Honor, my daughter is guilty
of plagiarizing my cells. — Kristen Henderson

Dear Anonymous, I've got a secret I know you can keep it because you don't really exist....This is what shapes you, this is what makes you
as authentic as you are
fake. — Kristen Henderson

And the sculptors will shape the soil for the writers to stretch the seeds
for the patient painters who sketch the petals they will shade in alabaster and gold. Their sweat is the rain. Maybe the jazzman will send us a rose. — Kristen Henderson

He utilizes
form for a striking lecture;
young poets shiver

inexperience,
but thaw over their own work,
fertilize magic. — Kristen Henderson

I wonder what became of you, your Johnny
Rotten skin, no Emerald City eyes.
You'd have been a beauty if you let inferiority
steam your glasses with its candor, sans laughter. — Kristen Henderson

Oblong stones sink
slow and sideways. Shaped
by the weight of waves,
dutifully vibrating nature's
lunar-bound graces,
they wash ashore only for
closed palms to forsake them.
The cheerful will
cherish them, place them
on windowsills, or on graves. — Kristen Henderson

Even the bees I'd swear were sent to protect us in the delicate business of hives and honey are stung to silence by the news that something winged has lost its flight. — Kristen Henderson

there's no way I can sleep in any position with so much still unwritten about the glory of basements, where,
with all the promise in crock pot boxes, small animals go to die, piles of laundry hide the machines, rusted tools fall into other rusted tools giving way to unsung sculpture, soiled playing cards and unmatched socks strewn atop a punched-out screen door make a shaggy parquet; and a famished, leggy fluorescent tube barely winks on the entire scene. — Kristen Henderson

Such is a community
of inviolable immunity, protected
from tampering or harpooning
mutiny. Every better thinker's impulse
to shrink us (at the shoreline from our
lifeblood's deep pulse) uses disparaging
scrutiny to sink us. — Kristen Henderson

In history, the bleeding
from arbitrary beatings, forced
breedings, and choked-heat
breathing could almost be withstood
by soul-feeding songs sung,
or listlessly hummed
just to go on. — Kristen Henderson

what if there was an uncanny moment when all the birds were grounded from Cape Town to Juneau, and everywhere between--all feathers frozen in a universal stutter, so quick as to make a snail of light, and even Stephen Hawking's mind would miss it? — Kristen Henderson

Up past the old lime kiln
built into the side of a hill
we take a hard right at a clearing
lined by brittle apple trees
still willing to bear fruit.

I snap sticks beneath my feet
and steal pictures of the view
while you reach for something
sweet, as much as it bows
to you. — Kristen Henderson

It was as if someone had left
the bird there
as a kind of telegram
of feathers, oily feathers
that looked like they'd struggled,
shuttered a little before letting go
into flight
forever. — Kristen Henderson

There's a pressure at all hours of the day only a poem can assuage. — Kristen Henderson

I write for pages,
get lost in the mezzanine
hidden from stages. — Kristen Henderson

A giant motherboard of geese,
unruffled by the state
police, swarmed in unison,
in harmony... — Kristen Henderson

Once, I took the penny whistle
you gave me and discovered a spot
by the roaring falls where I could play
as loud as I wanted.
I lay in the bifurcated trunk
of a low-slung birch tree. The sun peeked
through applauding leaves, high overhead. — Kristen Henderson

I like watching
from inside, as if locked away
and stealing the distinct pleasure
of a high school marching band drum section's
pure perfection. How stoically they play
in the exhaust of a fire engine's wake. — Kristen Henderson

I tell you once and for all -
in front of the angel pictures
on the wall, that I am not a host
to load-bearing ghosts or heady
entities, and if I was ever holy, I have fallen far
into the dense atmosphere of the living. — Kristen Henderson

Think of the Christmas present
of gashes you opened when, in an attempt
to be Superman, you slid in stocking feet
on a slippery wood floor and crashed
half way through a window. Hopes
of heroism dashed on the heels
of no clear sighting of Santa. — Kristen Henderson

She was so cool, as she knew, ankles crossed
at the puckered hem of granite
gray sweatpants, and she also knew
I was watching from the open door
of the B train - watching her pose
in apparent comfort at the girder of this city thoroughfare. — Kristen Henderson

...we're not even really hiking,
more like meandering in cinematic light. — Kristen Henderson