The Local Writers committee is pleased to announce Karin L. Frank has won our #IHeartU poetry contest with her entry Solace. We love the poem's progression from start to last lines, and the contrast between young and old. We enjoyed the sophisticated vocabulary punctuating strong imagery, and the poem is especially pleasing when read aloud. Try it! We're excited to hear Frank's reading of her own work at our April 9th 2nd Saturday event. Tell us what you like about Solace in the comments.
Karin L. Frank's poems have been published or are forthcoming in the Rockhurst Review, Taj Mahal Review, I-70 Review, Mid-America Poetry Review, Little Balkans Review, Coal City Review, North Dakota Quarterly, Kansas City Voices and Prole, and the anthologies, Cost of Freedom, Storm Country, Well Versed and Free Wheeling. They have also been published in Asimov’s, Tales of the Talisman, Dreams and Nightmares and Dark Matters Journal - science fiction venues. My haiku have appeared in Chuffedbuffbooks’ seasonal journal, Kigo and Frogpond.
My stories, flash fiction and memoirs have been published in Kansas City Voices, Chicken Soup, Pentales and the Shaker of Margaritas anthologies.
SOLACE
The mysteries amassed in years
piled atop years compel me to see you
as you are, no longer succor for a sweet tooth,
no longer a hit on a teenage addiction
but arnica for daily bruises.
Once we clawed our wild way up
from the adolescent caves,
through dank, hot and sultry corridors
of flesh that in those ancient times
erupted molten lava. These days
we store our innards, cling-wrapped
in plastic protection since we need them,
being mature, so rarely to accompany
our climate-controlled caresses. These days
a different balm floods your body
and wells up when you seek to comfort me.
Your hollows absorb my aches and pains.
Your hands soothe what twinges and
I find solace in the sounds you murmur,
meaning nothing, meaning all.
What once made the platelets
of my blood dance, now sings quietly
medieval rondeaux in my veins,
since our hearts palpitate on their own
now and not simply ‘cause we’re close.
But the tune still retains an earthy twang
from those old stoked volcanoes,
and I’m certain had the fires
that threatened to consume us
never blazed so fiercely
the ashes, now banked,
would no longer keep us warm.