“…yesterday, I saw bone-deep through a Picasso eye. I read the sky & wrote my life.” —Elsa Colligan ________ Read Kay’s poetry in Rattle, Vol. #16 The Reach of Song Sow’s Ear, Vol. 10 #3 Starfish Storyboard 7 & 8 ______ For more Poets ________ Contact Kay Gantt

Kay Gantt The Match Six feet two, supple as a babe at birth , you serve the ball left handed though your dominance is right. Makes the game almost fair you say — even then you up me by four games. Cheek bones chiselled by the gods, you are the conundrum of my heart, reading Tolstoy, quoting Ayn Rand. Maybe meningitis shuffled your deck funny leaving a gap between your aces & your tens. Sweaty socks chunked in dirty tennis shoes, laundry heaped on chairs, you swim, an Olympian empowered by a force garnered from your dad. You flip turn, shoot under water, surface like a shark. As if I were a bystander at your birth I watched you swim free, drag your twin brother from the hinterland of my inner acre. Today gray gathers at your temples, brutish whiskers shadow 5:00 PM. Am I in labor yet — your birth quartered in my belly? I brace for another wicked serve. Shimmer-sleek, you slip an ace past me, wink, still spitting afterbirth. Kitchens of Marriage To Marathon Home Depot over Flagler’s seven miles bridge, the water’s blotted bright beneath a piebald sky, ominous where shaded by dark blue thunderheads. At the store with a sales rep, we choose countertops for the kitchen at the beach. I campaign for Corian, he Wilsonart. Like paperdolls we plan our lives with cut-outs. Corian, he mutters. We go with Wilsonart. Our fevers rise like steam off collard greens. We cook in conjured kitchens; he bakes bread, I stew apples in their skins. Heading home the day hardens as it ends. Static clouds roil in the distance, wait for us as if they know what marriages can weather.