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Kirsten Rue

Author. Editor. Content Writer.
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    • Editor
    • Short Stories & Essays
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Recent

Blog
The Year of True Connection
about 6 years ago
On walking home in the rain after Alice Notley
about 8 years ago
New Essay Up at The Rumpus!
about 8 years ago
The Year of Boundless Love
about 8 years ago
Plotto #1
about 8 years ago

A recent cute photo of both parents on my Dad’s 70th birthday. Happy Father’s Day, Dad! Facts about Kevin Rue: 1. He has great hair and was a hair model for a friend’s exhibition in his youth. 2. He has cooler taste in music and mov
#marchforunity #jacksonhole #blacklivesmatter #wyoming #defundthepolicefundourschools
Gathered in the Town Square on Sunday during the March for Unity. #jacksonhole #blacklivesmatter #georgefloyd #saytheirnames
Someone is adding chalk art all along the local bike paths. #blacklivesmatter
Tonight I was very moved to kneel in silence with hundreds of people in my Wyoming hometown for 8 minutes and  46 seconds in honor of #georgefloyd . #jacksonhole . Pinedale. Sheridan. Cody. Laramie. #blacklivesmatter
BLACK LIVES MATTER
Remember and pay respects to George Floyd, a man who is not here today because racist police officers murdered him. Take action. Sign. Call. Demand more from this country and yourself. #blacklivesmatter #justiceforgeorgefloyd “Big Floyd was kno
Let’s get this rainy Friday night BBC binge started. Cookie by @burrowtongue Comfort scarf technique and pillow nest by me.
A poem for you by @brittanypaige . #wegotthisseattle
Social Distance Diary: The #ballardfarmersmarket has reopened for socially distant shopping. It was very well-organized with hand-washing stations, line entry spaced by 6 feet, and safe places to wait so that one group could approach a stand at a tim
Social Distance Diary: Tonight, I’m listening to the rain. Cleansing; steady. The road below is flint-black and gleaming; street lights like bars of gold shedding filaments, shimmering with falling water. A good rain like this sounds like promi
Social Distance Diary: The kids are alright. ❤️#socialdistancediary
Social Distance Diary: My barrier of “Do I or do I not address this animal like a person?” has always been vanishingly small. But now that birds comprise the majority of our social visits three flights up, I find myself in full on “
To the person who always says, “Let’s go!” In this case, all the way to the UK! I have always been aware of how much you are loved by everyone you have touched in life. From Dad to your friends to your coworkers to the children you
Social Distance Diary: Scenes from a socially distanced birthday, part two. Brought to you by the color pink (including tulips and Gerber daisies from @carrot_trail & @kristinpwalker !), Coco , special deliveries chez @sahasahas (zoomed in here),
Social Distance Diary: Scenes from a socially distanced birthday, part one. Riotous blooming, coffee with cupcakes, and saying hello to my birthday twin and family. #socialdistancediary

On walking home in the rain after Alice Notley

April 06, 2017

If poems are grafts onto sound waves then maybe mountains are grafts on the air. I looked at a crack in the pavement upon which rain was falling—it seemed to simmer—and I thought about what to call it until I realized it was a seam of obsidian. It named itself to me. Something much darker is there, and I’m not talking about the color, I’m talking about how deep it can go, and how in its liquid pool it suggests a depthless depth. It suggests, even, eternity, and here it is only a sly slick in the road.

The tree branches were furred with blossoms; these I reached out and touched with my hand. The rain fell into my hair. I thought about what Alice said, how’d she’d taken her lantern into the bowels of an epic because this was difficult, and no path had been forged there before of woman’s foot. Men, you see, long to think of themselves always as the only one doing a thing. A male writer loves to be alone and think himself alone. Woman are disobedient and multivocal and fractious and other. We are others to ourselves and others to others and essential to everyone.

I’m tired of thinking about how men write or what they do.

I’m most at ease with the many voices, or the single voice who perceives the many. I am tired of your bent, condescending listening, and though it is a treasure to me, I am tired of imagining my face as it appears to others. I am tired of imagining my mouth forming words.

All the invocations of spring have dogged me, those dogwoods. Deferential daffodils; the glad rain; the crocus joys; the conceit of easy time. Call to me clouds of blossom; call to me dread bloom and dread pink.

This is the woman’s season, the woman’s womb: fecundity and riot, the same coin. I reject it.

Somewhere in winter, I was already full in my knowing.

Somewhere in winter, I surfaced from a blade of rain, from a shear of snow. I came complete to the scene, surveyed it, and readied my hand to hold only the most delicate things: a perfect bead of dew, a leaf.

Your biggest complaint is that we live in miniature, but you never hold out your hand. You are never humbled to receive.

He that does not bow cannot know.

A woman with long, unruly gray hair told me she was tired tonight. She had breathed fire, and it had spent her.

A body and a star, in one person.

Even now I crackle on the ember of her burning, and even now imagine a new myth and a new day.

The world begins anew despite the season you have claimed. Imagine relinquishing all body; imagine rubbing out your boundaries as if with oil. It takes a heavy thumb, but it can be done.

Sometimes a hero is not a person at all; sometimes a hero is a sound wave; sometimes a hero is a song; sometimes a hero is a soothsayer; sometimes a hero is a dream; sometimes a hero cannot be named.

Sometimes a hero is being changed.

 

 

Tags: spring, prose poem, prayerful, myth
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I write fiction and essays, as well as edit and write a wide variety of web content, UX, and print publications. I am based in Seattle, WA.