Kristen Henderson QUOTES

1 " He utilizes
form for a striking lecture;
young poets shiver

inexperience,
but thaw over their own work,
fertilize magic. "

― Kristen Henderson

2 " Who is so fancy, esoterica saves the day?
Who is the Yogi, Namaste? "

― Kristen Henderson

3 " Once, I took the penny whistle
you gave me and discovered a spot
by the roaring falls where I could play
as loud as I wanted.
I lay in the bifurcated trunk
of a low-slung birch tree. The sun peeked
through applauding leaves, high overhead. "

― Kristen Henderson

4 " And no matter what
closet we were thrown in,
up what river we were sold
for an embarrassment,
or worse, traded
for a bottle of gin--
we’d carry on in
playful stitches, friends
‘til the end…which came
sooner than wished. "

― Kristen Henderson , Of My Maiden Smoking

5 " I wonder what became of you, your Johnny
Rotten skin, no Emerald City eyes.
You'd have been a beauty if you let inferiority
steam your glasses with its candor, sans laughter. "

― Kristen Henderson

6 " Up past the old lime kiln
built into the side of a hill
we take a hard right at a clearing
lined by brittle apple trees
still willing to bear fruit.

I snap sticks beneath my feet
and steal pictures of the view
while you reach for something
sweet, as much as it bows
to you. "

― Kristen Henderson

7 " If in poetry court she was called
to testify on matters where
I was condemned to imprisonment: parking my ego
at a broken meter, line violations, forced rhyme,
dealing stanzaics to children, shooting
off my mouth, getting cute, for even this
latest attempt at verse, she would tell the whole truth,
she would admit from the pit
of her unsung brilliance,
from all of the paintings and poems
she herself has been making
and storing in the vast empire of her
singing soul, your Honor, my daughter is guilty
of plagiarizing my cells. "

― Kristen Henderson , Drum Machine

8 " There’s a pressure at all hours of the day only a poem can assuage. "

― Kristen Henderson , Drum Machine

9 " You think it’s a game?
Unintelligible? Ha!
Envision no spoons.

This is serious.
It is a matter of joy
versus emptiness. "

― Kristen Henderson

10 " ...we’re not even really hiking,
more like meandering in cinematic light. "

― Kristen Henderson , Drum Machine

11 " He may take long walks
in the raining dark
almost aimlessly
to a spot of soaked grass
in a neighbor’s open field.
He’s decided this is the place
for you and him to meet again. "

― Kristen Henderson

12 " Sure, I watched the workmen come and lower large pieces of rotten sheetrock and lift new clean panels on a pulley
from that same window months ago, and I could have written then, but I must have sensed her coming, the smoker, so I waited. "

― Kristen Henderson , Drum Machine

13 " I dream
for an absentee and oft maligned
device—the accident-maker,
the soul-taker, my camera;
its factory guaranteed
third eye, without which I am duly dim
and memory denied. No pictures
for my contrived Arbus to declare,
excepting some stitch of Sexton
manages these sentences
of despair. "

― Kristen Henderson

14 " If you knew you were
going to lose your memory
but you could choose five things
you’d never forget, what would they be—
a certain face, a taste, a scent,
a touch; how deep
in this, the middle
of your life? "

― Kristen Henderson

15 " Time’s relativity
is considered and abandoned,
for the more revelatory
experiences of starlight
in strands, and pearly
floors that span as far as
absolute compassion... "

― Kristen Henderson

16 " ...you hold a poem
that functions half as personal
note and half as telescope
to the heights
awaiting us all. "

― Kristen Henderson , Drum Machine

17 " And the sculptors will shape the soil for the writers to stretch the seeds
for the patient painters who sketch the petals they will shade in alabaster and gold. Their sweat is the rain. Maybe the jazzman will send us a rose. "

― Kristen Henderson , Drum Machine

18 " Would it be enough to rock on a stormless sea with each our separate memories tuned to the state of the sinking sun? "

― Kristen Henderson , Drum Machine

19 " I tell you once and for all—
in front of the angel pictures
on the wall, that I am not a host
to load-bearing ghosts or heady
entities, and if I was ever holy, I have fallen far
into the dense atmosphere of the living. "

― Kristen Henderson , Drum Machine

20 " As a woman still,
without the right kind of mouth,
my tongue’s of no use. "

― Kristen Henderson

1
2
3