Spoken Word

Barometer Check,
or, when did I last laugh

by Marion Kimes

I’m the woman who cries when she can’t find

what she thinks she just lost. runs around

looking everywhere, scattering sorrow.

maybe I fear misplacing life.

I’m the one in the corner

bending & leaning into the walls

who wraps her arms around herself

& holds on there when deeply moved,

who lived with the one who made her laugh.

I need the ballast of playfulness,

rumbling tumbling scaleleaping laughter,

that harmless healing medicinal herb

laughter, therapeutic as couches,

available, cheap, ours.

Marion Kimes's work has been published in anthologies, broadsides, & in literary zines & reviews, like Raven Chronicles, as well as in a series of small-press books featuring her own work: Machines from emPo Publications; A Stretch of Poets, Poetry Around Press; Whirled from Wood Works Press; Crows Eyes/ of multiplication and light, from nine muses books; Choosing The Next Stone, and Namoratunga, also from nine muses. She recently published pommes, latterly poems (Seattle, 2007).