John Kay lives and works in Heidelberg, Germany, as an education counselor. He has an MFA from the University of Arizona, taught writing for the University of Maryland in its European Division for many years, and worked as a mental health therapist at Providence Medical Center in Portland, Oregon. His poems have appeared in many magazines, including Kayak, the New York Quarterly, the Wormwood Review, the Clackamas Literary Review, Bellevue Literary Review, Chiron Review, Pearl, Jewish Currents, and many others. He has three chapbooks, the most recent, Further Evidence of Someone, from Eyelite Press; and he is finalizing a full-length effort, Suddenly.
Landmine
Rushing down a pitiful path, waving
a stick with the joints worn smooth
so it appears to have wooden ankles,
he races into a field of springs, drawn on
by the warring cries of his comrades.
Ignoring lions sleeping in the dirt,
challenging the others, he whirls across,
then somewhere in-between, he treads
where legions have traveled--and stops,
anchoring deep in the devouring sky.
Later, stars. Then the village, half-asleep,
clenches at the distant, blunting growl.
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John Kay lives and works in Heidelberg, Germany, as an education counselor. He has an MFA from the University of Arizona, taught writing for the University of Maryland in its European Division for many years, and worked as a mental health therapist at Providence Medical Center in Portland, Oregon. His poems have appeared in many magazines, including Kayak, the New York Quarterly, the Wormwood Review, the Clackamas Literary Review, Bellevue Literary Review, Chiron Review, Pearl, Jewish Currents, and many others. He has three chapbooks, the most recent, Further Evidence of Someone, from Eyelite Press; and he is finalizing a full-length effort, Suddenly.