Kerry Shawn Keys
kerrykeys@yahoo.com

Kerry Shawn Keys’ roots are in the Appalachian Mountains (eastern North America). From 1998 to 2000, he taught translation theory and creative composition as a Fulbright Associate Professor at Vilnius University. He has dozens of books to his credit, including translations from Portuguese and Lithuanian, and his own poems informed by rural America and Europe, and Brazil and India (Peace Corps) where he lived for considerable time. His work ranges from theatre-dance pieces to flamenco songs to meditations on the Tao Te Ching, and is often lyrical with intense ontological concerns. Of late, he has been writing prose wonderscripts, and monologues for the stage. A children’s book, The Land of People, received a Lithuanian laureate in 2008 for artwork he co-authored. He performs with the free jazz percussionist and sound-constellation artist, Vladimir Tarasov – Prior Records released their CD in 2006. His most recent book is Transporting, a cloak of rhapsodies (2010). Keys received the Robert H. Winner Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America in 1992, and in 2005 a National Endowment For The Arts Literature Fellowship. He received a Translation Laureate Award from the Lithuanian Writers Union in 2003. He was a Senior Fulbright Research grantee for African-Brazilian studies, and is a member of the Lithuanian Writers Union and PEN. Selected poems have appeared in Czech, English, and Lithuanian. Currently, Keys is Poet-in-Residence for Summer Literary Seminars Lithuania (SLS Lithuania). He also writes a bi-monthly column, Letter From Vilnius: Eastern/Central Europe and Excursions Elsewhere for Poetry International, San Diego State University.

from the Dais
in memory of Cicero

this is my tongue
this is my left hand
I wasn’t much for speaking
my syllables weren’t pebbles
I was a poet
made to sing

nonetheless
They impaled these here
my body’s vestigial and elsewhere
my right hand’s an organ donation of a kind
I’m trying to say as much as I can
(it’s difficult) before my tongue gets eaten
by the tiniest of birds and the silence of the sun

soon all that remains
will be the sign language of bone
around the imagined palm

and what has been
and will be
written

The Gorge

Grapes feed the gorge,
unforaged wine of the sun’s forge,
and wormy apples, dandelion and feed corn.
And all that grows near or in the gorge,
or pours down from overhead to deluge
the coal-mine Franz Klein darkness,
also feeds the shipwrecked Minotaur
that lies in wait there.
It eats nearly everything
that tumbles and tosses
into the main of its inarticulate throat.
This is what a gorge does best,
turning all that’s green and crimson
into powdery carapace
and the muddy mask of compost.
It will eat you, too, like the papier-mâché pâté
of imprisoned gutturals that spill from your pen.
You won’t get away as the gorgeous, gray heron
I saw one day rising in a pterodactyl-deadly
Icarian arabesque
back into the breath of its own creation.
Disgorged and godlike, and glad to fall victim
to the ferocious rays of the sun.

Sugar

Sugar. Ice-cream...look at all these old people. At the round-table. I want to go. I never thought I’d end up in one of these. Home. O’! cake. Sugar. I don’t want that. Greens, no. Ha, can I take the dessert to my room. Goody. For later. If you don’t finish your meal you can’t...doesn’t mean I can’t. Not my last time, or first. God, how sweet. Sweets. How many years. Chocolate, boy, you always liked chocolate. Goody. God. Death should be fed. Me. And I don’t...when i fell, they gave me sugar. In my blood. Night night sweetheart your nana said. Her last words. Heart. Corason. Kore. Karen. You are still allergic to apples. Sweetheart, take care, the ice-cream will melt. I’ll drink it. A shake. Do you know, sweet, I’ve lost my mind. My memory’s gone. Sure, I remember her name. Her names. Ann. Joy. It’s snowing. Look. Gone. Who’s gone. Me. Him. It’s so hot, snowing, in here. Ice-cream. The window, open. I never thought I would have a picture-window. All those sleigh scenes on the dinner plates. Remember. I remember you. What’s your name. I’m just kidding. It’s cold. But I can look out the window. See the snow. And you can look in. A real picture-window. Pictures on both sides. My hair, I didn’t comb. I want some ice-cream, a cone, a snow-cone. So sweet. I didn’t think I’d live this long. The pain is gone. Remember, I used to wish I was dead. So much pain. Here, have some. Where are you. It’s time for bed. You can stay here. They changed the sheets. It’s so cold. With the window open, are there still pictures on both sides. Sugar sheets. Sweet. Pillows. See my bears. When I fell, it was at the pictures. I remember that. I was leaving. I never left though. I’m here. It’s cold. Sleeping on sugar. Remember the sugar-plum fairy. And the tooth-fairy. You’ve always had a sweet-tooth, too. Did you see the pictures. Both sides. None from below. You can sleep under the bed. Or the pillow with the tooth-fairy. No one will see you. Like snow on TV. There must be a picture from above. The man upstairs. That’s what your father used to say, the man upstairs. Sweet, tuck me in. One more year, and then another. It’s snowing. The ice-cream truck. Can you hear the bells.

Dog

The little bastard was yapping and biting at my pant legs. I took the plastic bag of pampers I was carrying to the dumpster and whacked him over the head. But then I lost my balance and fell on the icy sidewalk into a coma. When I came to, I had the smelly pampers all over and around me. A spiteful dog. He must have torn into the bag and decorated me with them. There he was, under a nearby tree still yapping at me. I picked up a pamper and threw it at him. Then another and another and another and another and another and another and another…finally keeping one for myself as protection. This was the first battle. War was looming. I went back to my flat to develop a strategy. I put the stinking pamper on the table next to my compass and pen and paper. Opening the window for some fresh air, I saw the dog sniffing the pampers. He was wagging his tail as if gloating. Getting my smell I guess. He too was making plans. I would fool him and change my diet – no more dairy products!  I put the pamper in the freezer as a souvenir of the first skirmish. A matter of life and death. Purple hearts. For the moment, neither of us had triumphed.