November 22, 2022

109 Bermuda

Kenzie Allen

I build it, I build the house, I build the eaves, I build the roof where we looked for stars, I build the ever-clogged gutters for which no time could be found, I build the brick face and the curb appeal, I build the door slamming open as the child flew forth into what the window framed, the streets calling my name, I build the lintel where they bent their heads in whispers, I build the climb and precarious, I build the sky with its tiny points of light which might be my mother coming home at last, I build the last two-story she might ever own clean and free, I build the longing, I build the view to the wicked canal, I build the red front porch where the bottle fell and bled its wine, where the last chance of reconciliation also shattered and never forget it was my fault, my careless, which left the dark red stain, I build the sometime home now paved over and prime real-estate condominium, I build the memory like something I can inhabit, and the sawgrass he planted and the lemon trees she cherished, perhaps if I build it there will finally be room for the broken, the missing, therein to dwell.

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“I believe in poetry’s capacity to make and remake the world. I wanted to use the structure of this poem to attempt to build the house my mother and I shared when I was young on Davis Island in Tampa Bay. I drew out the basic shape using the method of contour drawing—in this case, drawing one continuous line—in a graphics program, and, from there, wrote the poem directly onto that path, such that each portion of the house would inspire the lines that formed around it. I wished to go back to that memory and live there, at least on the page.”
—Kenzie Allen

Kenzie Allen is a Haudenosaunee poet and multimodal artist. She is a descendant of the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin. The winner of a 92NY Discovery Prize, a James Welch Prize for Indigenous Poets, the 49th Parallel Award in Poetry, and the Littoral Press Prize, she was born in West Texas and currently lives in Toronto.

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“paper dolls (for darnell arnoult)” by Jaki Shelton Green
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Thanks to Jake Skeets, author of Eyes Bottle Dark with a Mouthful of Flowers (Milkweed, 2019), who curated Poem-a-Day for this month’s weekdays. Read or listen to a Q&A about Skeets’s curatorial approach and find out more about our guest editors for the year.

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Poem-a-Day - "109 Bermuda" by Kenzie Allen

109 Bermuda

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Older messages

"Gahé Dzíł / Mountain Spirits" by Crisosto Apache

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"Drifting" by Olivia Ward Bush-Banks

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"Tendril" by Jada Renée Allen

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