kathleen hellen
SIGNS
The likeness of the sun floats pearly, other-worldly on the olive-oil waters of the river. A hazy locus, the ivy trespassing, slouching in and out of rotting fences. Beyond the funeral home, there’s carry-out for beer. Amber lots like grasslands dispossessed, where narratives in trails include the lost Manokin, where once the Nanticoke had traded words (about 300)—not used since frail Miss Lydia last spoke—like beaver skins for match coats; where fugitive Acadians once wintered, before their lands were confiscated; where Negro galleries still host a ghostly choir, the old brick founder’s church a dutiful memorial. I patronize the yard sales, craft fairs, buy a $50 hat stitched out of colored rags, a cranberry-bran muffin, at the antique shop and bookstore, where a friendly volunteer in cardigan and corduroy guesses that this Dickinson is rare, worth $140 (maybe $2); she can’t say for sure because The Internet is “acting up.” So I browse the shelves of cookbooks, orphaned by convenience. Huddled in the nooks, biographies of Washington and Franklin, Treasure Island. Moby Dick. A threadbare Rip Van Winkle snores atop an ailing Keats. Who reads Evangeline anymore? I sip mint tea and read the book I bought about the railroad expansion. The bean field where they built the naval base, and over themed displays of guides to popular antiques, limpid watercolors of the Chesapeake. On the way back to the B&B a peel of tape marks “DANGER,” surrounds a rusting crane. The public park’s gazebo’s, for the most part, ornamental. Independence Hall is now a popular café. I stop to take a selfie at the bridge. The water whiffles. The current follows course, escaping down to Tangier Sound, where watermen give way to splashy tour boats, where “Public Auction” trades for new exchanges, the curb a map of annual migrations—yellow arrows flying in the opposite direction.
The likeness of the sun floats pearly, other-worldly on the olive-oil waters of the river. A hazy locus, the ivy trespassing, slouching in and out of rotting fences. Beyond the funeral home, there’s carry-out for beer. Amber lots like grasslands dispossessed, where narratives in trails include the lost Manokin, where once the Nanticoke had traded words (about 300)—not used since frail Miss Lydia last spoke—like beaver skins for match coats; where fugitive Acadians once wintered, before their lands were confiscated; where Negro galleries still host a ghostly choir, the old brick founder’s church a dutiful memorial. I patronize the yard sales, craft fairs, buy a $50 hat stitched out of colored rags, a cranberry-bran muffin, at the antique shop and bookstore, where a friendly volunteer in cardigan and corduroy guesses that this Dickinson is rare, worth $140 (maybe $2); she can’t say for sure because The Internet is “acting up.” So I browse the shelves of cookbooks, orphaned by convenience. Huddled in the nooks, biographies of Washington and Franklin, Treasure Island. Moby Dick. A threadbare Rip Van Winkle snores atop an ailing Keats. Who reads Evangeline anymore? I sip mint tea and read the book I bought about the railroad expansion. The bean field where they built the naval base, and over themed displays of guides to popular antiques, limpid watercolors of the Chesapeake. On the way back to the B&B a peel of tape marks “DANGER,” surrounds a rusting crane. The public park’s gazebo’s, for the most part, ornamental. Independence Hall is now a popular café. I stop to take a selfie at the bridge. The water whiffles. The current follows course, escaping down to Tangier Sound, where watermen give way to splashy tour boats, where “Public Auction” trades for new exchanges, the curb a map of annual migrations—yellow arrows flying in the opposite direction.
Born in Tokyo, half Japanese, Kathleen Hellen is the author of the award-winning collection Umberto’s Night and two chapbooks, The Girl Who Loved Mothra and Pentimento. Nominated for the Pushcart and Best of the Net, and featured on Poetry Daily, her poems have won the Thomas Merton and James Still poetry prizes, as well as prizes from the H.O.W. Journal and Washington Square Review. Awards include individual artist grants from the Maryland State Arts Council and the Baltimore Office of Promotion & the Arts. Hellen served as senior poetry editor for the Baltimore Review and on the editorial board of Washington Writers’ Publishing House.
