Kasey's introduction poem

Hello all,

I feel so happy to be here with you in this space! Thanks, Claire, for suggesting this intro-poem idea. I'm excited to read all of yours. I had a slightly hard time choosing mine... since my book was published I feel, even more so, that I don't know what I am doing poetically and what "my voice" actually is and what a "typical" poem of mine looks and sounds like. So - here is the first poem from my book - in lots of ways I think the poems I am writing (very slowly!) now are not much like this one (or maybe they are??), but this one does seem typical of me and my voice at least in terms of the book that is out in the world.

Thanks, all! Really looking forward to reading your work and conversing with all of you here :).

Kasey

The Bat

First dark, then more dark

smoothed down over it.

First sleep, then eyes

open to the ceiling

where something circles.  For a moment,

you can't name it.  And for a moment

you're not afraid.  Remember

Blake's angels, how they leaned

toward each other, and balanced

by touching only the tips of their wings?

Between their bodies, a space

like the one just after rain begins, when rain

isn't rain, but the smell

of dust lifted, something silent and clean.