Scaffold towers of audio visual hardware preside.
A cart is a gurney for dingy nylon fish, stranded.
Modeling dolls dumped on a shelf, weep
(dread being whittled away).
Construction paper conforms, segregated
by color, anemic in a dark corner cupboard.
Exposed ceiling beams suggest shipwreck.
On a dry-erase board a ball of fire goes nowhere.
The opposite wall interns toons
in cells; they draw no readers. Crank-out windows, shut tight,
offer a limited view. In this
chamber we take on the attributes of storage,
sit heavy on metal chairs, students who
can’t see far enough or tell how it will end.
Trapped in a freeze-frame, we stare, holding
our breath as an Argentine figurehead emerges,
zoetic. Lifting a pen to her lips, she whispers,
Each of you must write your own escape.
Although steeped in a historical background, Linda Kennedy is now a musician working in the Richmond, Virginia metropolitan area. Looking for another creative outlet, she enrolled in poetry classes at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (VMFA) Studio School in 2013 and later at the Visual Arts Center of Richmond. The latter awarded Writers Who Write, a small cadre of writers of which Linda is a charter member, the Leslie Shiel Scholarship for Creative Writing in 2015. Linda’s poems have appeared in Alphanumeric, the weekly online feature of Nonbinary Review, the VMFA Blog, and been honored by the Poetry Society of Virginia.
