In Sickness by Carolynn Kingyens

To know her is to know
the intimate madness
of a junk drawer;
the madness at the bottom
of a carpetbag -
nail clippers,
old ketchup packets,
loose change,
hard candy hard enough
to chip a front tooth –
not things as much as thoughts
is how she described the
rambling sensation.

I know a good man
still in love with his
dementia-suffering wife,
even after she’d hurl insults
from a mouth on fire,
thinking he was her dead father,
who once dropped
her farm kittens,
one by one,
inside a pillowcase,
tied a tight knot
before casually tossing
the crying, moving bag
into the backyard pond.

“Why my kittens, daddy?!”
his wife would scream
while pounding
on her husband’s chest
under the glow
of the porch light.

He told me this story
over a beer once —
an old man to a young man,
and in that moment
I knew what I had to do.



Carolynn Kingyens' debut poetry collection - Before the Big Bang Makes a Sound (Kelsay Books) is now available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and at a few independent book stores around New York City. She will be on a radio show in April for National Poetry Month. Today, Carolynn lives in New York City with her husband of 20 years, two beautiful, kind daughters, a sweet rescue dog, and a very old, happy cat.