Trouble by Catherine Kyle

BY CATHERINE KYLE

Trouble

I dreamt I was a tree, deep in a forest. My roots were wound around a boulder covered with moss and needles I had shed. A voice in the dream said, “See—you’ve become so accustomed to this pain, you’ve grown yourself around it.” 

Even then, my roots did not let the boulder go. Even then, they clung to it like a precious creature sheltered, a satchel held close to the chest.

*

I do not know how to speak about this. I do not know the word for watching someone I love become, voluntarily and involuntarily, swallowed by a garment they put on. I do not know the cry to make as the fur grows over their hands. I do not know what plea to scream as the collar grows over their face. As the line between the sleeve and their skin disappears. 

A thing that transcended words. Words, the most reliable life raft I had known. 

*

I dreamt I was battling a beast in the woods. Snow made crystals on the ground. In the dream, I was flat on my back, lifting a shield with one exhausted arm. The beast pounded on it, scratched at it, knocking its jewels loose. It roared terribly, shaking snow from the bare branches. Its body moved, reckless and relentless. But the eyes were those of someone I loved. In anguish. As horrified as I was.

The eyes spoke in words I do not know. The beast’s breaths, rising through the cold air in puffs, were words I do not know. 

*

I do not know what to say when someone I love says, voice shaking, “If it is here, I will drink it”—then goes to the market, returns home, and fills the shelves with it. When my questioning of this, soft as a sparrow, is met with snarls and barks.

Whom am I speaking to, in these moments? The person, or the beast? 

* 

How many monsters can a heart contain? How many selves can dwell there? I imagine myself the way the beast must have seen me—a hindrance, a noisy gnat. 

I imagine myself the way the person must have seen me, but here, there is only a void. I imagine myself as two eyes pleading, the silence of lifting a shield. 

*

When everything explodes, when the powder keg of the home finally flashes into cinders, I dream I am hanging from a single board of its wreckage, dangling over a cliff. Smoke pours from the ruins of the home. The board I am gripping is charcoal. A voice in the dream whispers to me, “All you have to do is let go.” 

I know I will hit every rock on the way down. I know the sea is there to catch me. 

I unlock my fingers like roots from the board. I fall and fall and fall. 

* 

Foam and salt slice every red wound. I float on my back, gaze skyward. I have no name for the pillar of smoke at the cliff’s edge that used to be a home. I have no name for the absence of a figure that might have stood there and gazed back. 

I swim because the stars have no language, just presence. I swim because the waves have no words, just a pulse. I swim because my own heart is present and pulsing. I let these things carry me on. 

Catherine Kyle is the author of Fulgurite (Cornerstone Press, forthcoming), Shelter in Place (Spuyten Duyvil, 2019), and other poetry collections. She was the winner of the 2019-2020 COG Poetry Award, a finalist for the 2021 Mississippi Review Prize in poetry, and a finalist for the 2021 Pinch Literary Awards. She works as an assistant professor at DigiPen Institute of Technology, where she teaches creative writing.

Poetry By Catherine Kyle

Ode to a Parallel Universe in Which We Are Animated by Centripetal Force

Once, seeking something to capture you,
I bowed my head at the feet of a priestess

wearing all blue in a desert. Her robe, flowing,
milky horizon. Melding with milky horizon.

I asked for a snare and she handed a vial. I wore
it around my neck. A choker, a ribbon chain.

Thrumming over my heart. Belief: a common theme
here. An ardent desire to bind to you, fastened around

my throat. As if a pounded rhythm: a female
guided by want. Days later we are dragging off

a bottle near the freeway. The shadows syruping walls
with headlights render you zoetrope. A man shifting

in and out. In and out of light. Glass bottle a fallen star,
amber liquid honey. I hold the vial out to you. I know

this is kid stuff, I say. But it’s potion. Potion to bind us
together. You exhale smoke and inhale vial. Zoetrope,

spinning, unknowable if stilled. Sequence of images,
fracturing, that add up to something beloved. Passing

headlights strobe your throat, jugular bobbing
with swallows. Belief: a common word for love, one

frequently interchanged. One attached to electrode,
that sings with illuminating volts, as if in praise.

Ode to a Parallel Universe in Which Two Young Ladies Jailbreak

We climb the tree to escape
the ground. Its verdant and

fetid decay. Its earthworms
squiggling, spaghetti meat

strands. The beetles that chomp
with pincers. Scavengers who

eat the dead. We were not intended
to know of the treehouse. We

in our petticoats. We in our pinafores.
We with our shined, round shoes.

But we do know now. We spied it
out the window. Waving its arms

like a tormented saint. Beckoning
through the mist. So our round shoes

tread over slippery grass, over dewy
caterpillars. Our small hands grip

the ladder planks. We ascend like
parfaits, like gumdrops. Skirts

pink petits fours. The wooden floor
is within sight, but we must not

disturb the hornets. Those who would
hunger for plums. Those who would

feast ceaselessly on their flesh if
awoken by foot on board. The hornets

are dozing, metallic wings folded.
The plums are all around. Hanging

like pale green uvulas waiting for license
to speak. We are waiting for license

to speak. These lace collars cloister
our words. We scale the tree and

unfasten each other’s. We shed the
pinafores. We stand in our bloomers

and camisoles. Barefooted rebel dolls.
The sky is lightening in the east. You

reach your hand out toward it. The tree
issues a massive groan. One thousand

hornets snap awake. Two thousand
webbed wings whir. But we are glint-

eyed. We are not afraid. Moss and leaves
shudder down to earth as treehouse

untangles from roost. It hovers, creaking
in the air, dragging snapping branches.

I gather as many green plums as I can
in the satchel of my shorn dress. You quietly

mouth an aubade, staring toward the sun.
The swarm is outraged, searing toward us.

Screaming, Get inside. You are not meant
for movement, for motion. You were made to

be eaten. You are ours to consume. You shake
your head. Steer toward the horizon. The

cirrus clouds sodden with violet. The swarm
falls away like livid gold dust as we slowly pick

up speed. We undo our ribbons, final vestiges
of domicile. Wind stirs, tousles our hair. 

---

Catherine Kyle holds a Ph.D. in English from Western Michigan University. She teaches literature and composition at the College of Western Idaho and creative writing at The Cabin, a literary nonprofit. She is the author of the hybrid-genre collection Feral Domesticity (Robocup Press, 2014) and the poetry chapbooks Flotsam (Etched Press, 2015) and Gamer: A Role-Playing Poem (dancing girl press, 2015). She also helps run the Ghosts & Projectors poetry reading series. Her poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and graphic narratives have appeared in The Rumpus, Superstition Review, WomenArts Quarterly, and elsewhere. Her writing has been honored by the Idaho Commission on the Arts and other organizations. You can learn more about her at www.catherinebaileykyle.com.