Follow
Me Down
Poems by Kate Buckley
Click
here to purchase a copy of Follow Me Down
(Tebot Bach, 2009)
Click here to read selected poems from
the book
Praise for Kate Buckley and Follow Me Down:
"Vivid, passionate, pulsing with life in the face of
loss and pain, these incantations bravely seek to void The
Void. They are poems to conjure with."
—
Charles Harper Webb
"15th
century painter Cennini spoke of the art of 'unseen things
hidden in the shadow of natural ones.' Like 'a sea turning
in on itself' Kate Buckley's poems speak to this, moving
together, folding and unfolding the echoes of a voice in
place, a voice out of place, 'salt licking salt—/coming
home.'Follow Me Down maps out the geography of
longing where sometimes 'you walk the yellow fields,' sometimes
'the moon sets itself on fire,' lighting up the distances
between the past and the future. Buckley's parenthetical
considerations, her ache and intellect coincide in a sensuous,
revelatory motioning toward that inspired sanctuary of who
we are."
—
Elena Karina Byrne
"She
is making her mark on the landscape of contemporary American
poetry."
—
Molly Peacock
Selected Poems from Follow Me Down:
You
Know No Matter What You Catch
You Won’t Be Able To Eat It for Supper, Or the Breakfast
After That
You
walk the yellow fields
to the pond with your mother,
your face still smarting from
the slap she dealt you.
You
follow your mother to the pond,
your cheeks still stinging from
the slap she dealt you
(as if you deserved it).
Your
cheeks still stinging,
you pick up your pole, drop
the slap she dealt you
into brackish, dank water.
You
pick up your pole, feel
the line slip through your hands
into brackish, dank water
(with nowhere to go so it stays).
The
line slips through your hands,
finding its face in the water beneath
with nowhere to go so it stays.
And you do not meet her eyes.
Finding
your face in the water beneath,
your cheeks still smarting—
you cannot meet her eyes—still,
you walk the yellow fields home.
Fitzgerald’s
Wife
The
night divides itself between my eyes,
the left blue, the right brown.
Morning
never comes too soon—all
that pushing
and pulling, bargaining between the sheets,
and still so much yet to write.
One
night the mirror broke into a hundred
thousand pieces—the
bottle
seemed so surprised.
Sometimes
I walk all night;
sometimes I count every crack in the ceiling.
Sometimes
the moon sets itself on fire.
Sometimes I want to join it.
—
from "Follow
Me Down"
This poem first appeared in The Cafe Review, Fall
2008
Sur
la Plage
Her
breasts with their dark
nipples winking like a Polynesian girl’s
set free from a painting—
Gauguin
in Tahiti, marveling
at all that golden flesh glistening
like
the scooped flesh of melons
set free from skin,
Raspberries
glittering in navels,
jewels in the mouths of birds—
He
kneels to gently
experimentally tongue
the fruit from its cup,
slipping
the sweetness into
his mouth, eating even the seeds—
smooth
face already descending
for more
Aubade
Do
you remember the night you called out
from that slender deck sloped over the sea?
Mr.
Williams! you roared (addressing Andy who owned
the house next door), Sing for us, sing ‘Moon River.’
No
voice emerged from the dark house to our right,
and we ducked inside to the quiet dark of this new thing
begun.
You
poured or I poured more wine and we sat in the glimmer
of the only candle we could find, the sole music
the hushed slush of the waves splash-crashing to shore.
After we crawled beneath the covers (was it your
house then—were
you staying with friends?), we didn’t stir
until the morning wafted in: jasmine, coffee, birdsong
and the sun made its way over the yardarm of your arm
anchored beneath my head and you woke me, singing.
