Adele Kenny
What You See
(After John Everett Millais's The Somnambulist)
Always the time other than now—she's deep into being and not (a
kind of detached waiting). Balanced inside the shaping edge, she
knows more than she needed to know—the loss after each loss that
doesn't go away. It's come to this: everything measured by
watershed moments. Before. After.
In twilight's ribbed light (like a painting's textured finish), the
distance is twilled with gray, the sagging sky reordered. Her candle
sputters in its last bit of tallow. No moon. No stars. She walks
deeper into what may or may not be a dream—a deeper mirror,
herself inside it.
Bio
Adele Kenny, founding director of the Carriage House Poetry Series, and poetry editor of Tiferet Journal, is the author of twenty-four books (poetry & nonfiction). Her poems have been published worldwide and have appeared in books and anthologies from Crown, Tuttle, Shambhala, and McGraw-Hill. She is the recipient of various awards, including NJ State Arts Council poetry fellowships and Kean University's Distinguished Alumni Award. Her book, A Lightness, A Thirst, or Nothing at All was a 2016 Paterson Prize finalist. She has read in the US, England, Ireland, and France, and has twice been a Geraldine R. Dodge Festival poet. www.adelekenny.com