rewind

Poetry by Katherine Schmidt & Candice Kelsey

01:23:45:18
how in the end there were dragons
pulling my father’s copper pick-up
from the rooftop of my childhood
a titan exit that evening
along the virginian access road
he left like medea’s dead sons
me a girl-jason study in first grief
01:23:45:12
how lightning struck the sycamore
or was it the stop-start of his camcorder
an attempt to prove magic
to capture our saturday hike
01:23:45:11
how high grass was like knife edges
red pine bark like ancient paper
decaying leaves like perfumed death
01:23:45:10
dust coating our throats
thighs sweating the nylon seats
01:23:45:10
how we had forgotten to load the tape
and how there was
01:23:45:09
nothing
01:23:45:08
but the dragon’s tongue
01:23:45:05
the fractured memory of my father
01:23:45:01
how there’s a sorcery of death in all beginnings
00:00:00:00

Katherine Schmidt is a researcher and co-founder of Spark to Flame: A Journal of Collaborative Poetry. Her most recent work can be found in Roi Fainéant Press, Rejection Letters, and Anti-Heroin Chic. You can find her on Twitter @ktontwitr.

Candice Kelsey is a poet, educator, and activist in Georgia. Her work appears in Passengers Journal, Variant Literature, and The Laurel Review among others. A finalist for a Best Microfiction 2023, she is the author of four collections with another forthcoming from Fauxmoir Lit. Candice also serves as a poetry reader for The Los Angeles Review. Find her @candice-kelsey-7 @candicekelsey1 and www.candicemkelseypoet.com.