Gillian Kiley
Gillian Kiley lives and teaches in Rhode Island. Her poems have appeared in the Black Warrior Review, the Colorado Review, Swerve, and other journals.
Gillian Kiley
A Rendering of the Site
In just a moment the bird that appeared to alight on the stovepipe is gone. Wingbeat too before the stoplight, a grey throb in the red, shadow dropping down to the fast cars on the wide boulevard where the trash is always in the picture and plastic bags filled with air fly on air. This […]
On Having a Tour of the Cathedral
Some days your ideas have just the basic, bright colors of parties, the feel of ordinary foods, and on sick days your rapture is just a slither of innards, your prayers, water pouring over the same grounds. Maybe it’s better here when the wind blows in from the left, if it can’t come straight down. […]
Miserableism
Landscape of props and shields, all there is to see – animals in lots and no still point in or outside of the car. The town not a town, the town not a village, the apartment building accepting only a bleak 1970’s sunlight on its rear façade. All with a ward-like feel, even the mountains […]
Novice
Sometimes the night rustles, kittens up these gorgeous people, and the moonlight goes on a spree. Filtered through the lenses of a telescope it warms the hands. I want to shout to the wings and not to the public, sing to a lollipop. I’ll be your decoy date. I’ve had permission to be out of […]
Axe
When the axe hangs from the hand the axe takes heart, or rather takes up residence behind the heart, folded in the possibility of disuse. At rest, left to bite continually into the dead marrow of a truncated tree, it anticipates the moment someone will force open a mouth of air, make the axe resume […]
Untitled
Fevered cabin, listening to the mechanized bell from the church on the corner and movie sounds from downstairs, volcanic as ash I wonder how it’s going for you, where you are. Whether to put together a recording for you that’s easy to listen to, that’s full of strings. It’s hard to plan when the plan […]