The editors of Hotmetalpress have chosen to publish Karen Benke's chapbook online. She
and Rachel Barbe were almost impossibly close in the chapbook competition. We finally
decided on Rachel's chapbook but could not place Karen among the general submisssions.
Read this online chapbook and you will see. Read it all. It will bring tears to your eyes at
times and the tears will not be of sadness always but of wisdom and redemption.
C --
Copyright hotmetalpress 2009 -- all rights revert to author
Light Becomes What It Touches
by Karen Benke
Contents
Childhood /5
Mirage /6
The Boy With Red Hair /7
I’ll Tell You a Secret /8
First Day /9
The Nothing /10
After the Divorce /11
When They Thought We Were Asleep /12
Brown Spider /13
Entering the Dark /14
Highway 99 /15
Gun /16
Apology /17
Third Grade /18
The Teacher Observes Trees With the First Grade /19
Impermanence & Naptime /20
As Birds Do /21
Today’s Topic: Rocks /22
A Child Wakes in the Middle of the Night /23
Back Through the Night /24
Reconstructing the Heart /25
Light Becomes What It Touches /26
Waiting With Maddie Whose Dad Moved Away
& Whose Mom is Late /27
Infinity /28
Acknowledgements /29
bio. /30
for Collen
You’ve led me to more than I am.
O lead me on, brief children,
To those white regions where no soul is spoiled.
—Theodore Roethke
Childhood
The sun spreads into a field—
and the field opens into another.
Life remakes her story.
You, too, were this child:
hiding with a flashlight
inside a shadowed cave—
With the cool air of summer
and the kissing sounds of bats;
enough shade to rest
and shallow creeks for thirst.
Those years continue to release
into a rush of vapor and heat—
fear twined with memory,
playing tag with waves on a beach.
For each chance lost,
the heart must work harder
not to shut anything out.
Sometimes your life dims grey.
Sometimes each moment turns
into a scarlet thread revealed.
Mirage
Heat of another afternoon, the four of us on a stretch of highway:
California, 1973. In the backseat next to my sister, I’m not sure
if we’re going north or south, east or west. We sit on beach towels,
windows rolled down as far as they’ll go. I’m wearing my one-piece
with faded daisies across the front. We’re almost there! My sister yells,
and our mother turns to remind us, Not so loud in the car, girls.
I tell her I’m not the one yelling. I’m the one looking into the miles
rising into sky, watching the water up ahead, in the middle of the road.
Our father explains the mirage the same way he explains about thunder
and lightning and which comes first, even though I can never remember.
When lightning strikes at home, we’re supposed to count our heartbeats.
Instead my sister and I run back inside to warn our mother how close we are
to bursting into flames. She smiles, gazing at our father still standing in the rain,
stars pulsing and falling around him. Now, in the rear view mirror,
he catches the light of our blue eyes and sends us each a kiss.
He hums a song about ponies and prairies and being lucky in love.
I tilt my head back, listening, and sunlight lands like a butterfly on my face.
I dream of a lake where we can cool off, with a diving board perched up high. Balancing out,
I take a breath, plug my nose and run. I plant my feet
at the edge then spring into air, somersaulting down into deep water, rushing up
cold around me. And, suddenly, it’s Mom’s voice whispering for me
to stop kicking her seat. My eyes flutter open and we’re all back on the highway,
driving into the sun. Definitely west, Dad says. But all I can see
is in the middle of the road, where time and direction keep disappearing.
Too many questions pour through me. But I just keep watching them:
those calm pools, hanging where the road levels off.
The boy with red hair
said my name so quietly—
when I reached his desk,
he looked up
with all those freckles
and asked if I would
read his poems;
tell him what I thought.
Sure, I answered.
Already late, I glanced
at the clock then gathered
the pencils, tucking his words
into my bag. I promised
I’d see him again next week.
I was halfway home
before I felt the weight
of responsibility
of what he’d given me.
I’ll Tell You A Secret
Poems hide
& it’s our job to find them.
Look around.
Wherever you are—
at a park; in a car;
picking wildflowers
on the side of the road—
at home, cleaning your room,
or eating a slice of peach pie.
Don’t be shy. You’re alive.
Ask yourself what you most
need to find. Look up
into your own patch of sky.
Breathe in the lake, count
the bees as they hover
among the blossoming trees.
In the middle of the night,
rise from your bed
& walk through the quiet
of each painted room.
Outside, bend down. Rest
your palms on the moist ground.
Invite in the clouds,
the slivered moon. Listen
to your heartbeat if you can.
Are you brave enough?
Of course, you are.
Now pick up a pen
& write it all down.
First Day
Linda Vista Elementary, 1973.
On my own, three blocks from home—
yellow ribbons holding back my braids.
Smiling shy, I say hi to Cara Fillmore;
frown when Kenny Wood pushes
in front to climb the silver slide.
There’s the smell of tanbark and
the clanging sound of the metal rings
I love to swing—never mind the sting
of blisters, rising into hills across my hands.
I play Catch and Count Down and
Keep Away From the Cootie Kissers,
the yard duty’s whistle reminding me
it’s time to go back inside. Right there,
in the center of it all, I stood, wide-eyed,
trying to contain all that swirling light.
I wish I could whisper to that girl,
Breathe. Don’t worry. You’ll be fine.
Instead, I look back and watch my life
continue to ripple and unwind
through a hop-scotch of space and time
as I reclaim myself whole and with
unwavering blessing, mine, all mine.
The Nothing
During Poetry, I sit next to the blue-hooded boy who tells me
he’s Just Matt. When I ask if he’s going to write,
he just looks at me, his face hard, pieces of dried grass clinging
to a dirty pant leg. He draws dark circles across the bottom half
of the paper in front of him. The Nothing, he calls it, explaining
there isn’t anything inside his imagination today: no dogs, no trees,
not even the storm that passed through his backyard the night before,
tipping over the trash cans his mom put out too early in the week,
the ones his dad yelled at her for while Matt stayed upstairs with his brother.
This morning, his mom yelled at him. He was going to be late for school
and if she told him once, she had told him a hundred times:
she didn’t want to hear another word out of him. Nothing. You got that?
After the Divorce
The boy from Room 5
takes the sidewalk home,
his backpack slung
over his shoulder.
Clouds part, the sky opens,
his thoughts fly into blue.
Wind, wind, wind, white cloud.
He chants the wing-beat rhythm,
a game he still plays.
Earlier, he was caught
day-dreaming—
When the teacher called on him,
he told her he wished he had wings
like the red-tailed hawks
that circle the roof of his house.
Circling, like time,
moving backward.
Upstairs in his room, he folds
the edges, white over white,
carefully creasing then releasing
the paper planes
he sails out his open window,
watching them all fall.
When They Thought We Were Asleep
They fought, and afterward
the house felt bigger,
more alone— my sister and I
on separate sides
of the hollering dark,
counting the headlights of cars
passing like searchlights
over us, the etching of field mice
huddled in the distance—
thunder clouds, rolling in.
Brown Spider
“Don’t worry spiders, I keep house casually.”
—Issa
Upstairs, in the room where I write,
at the table by the window
that faces the sleeping mountain,
beneath another haiku Issa wrote
(this one about a snail’s slow, slow climb
up Mt. Fuji)— right here, if you stand
beneath the unpolished beam
the way I did, last week, stuck
on a sentence and needing a diversion,
praying the morning sickness
soon would pass, the hissing nozzle
of the vacuum secure in hand—
I woke up in time to discover
what I had nearly destroyed:
behind the careful web, this brown
mother spider, guarding
two tiny pearl-shaped sacks.
Entering the Dark
I carry my son to his room
at the end of the hall.
My eyes trace the outlines
of the rocking chair in the corner—
horses and bears gazing at us
from muraled walls.
I promise him it will be okay.
Mommy’s right here, I say,
rolling him onto his stomach,
his fingers unfolding in regret
as if he already knows
the things of this world:
mother, milk, breast— are not his
to keep, but that everything
must one day be released.
Either furiously, like the moths’
arid wings, beating their desire
to become one with the light—
or else simply letting go,
passing from all that is
terrifying and beautiful.
Highway 99
The night my father left I found my sister
sitting in front of a muted television screen.
She twirled her ponytail and asked what we should do now.
But the words on my tongue dissolved like cotton candy.
Everything that happened, and was about to happen,
felt like a maze of loose spider webs I couldn’t tame.
So I did the only thing I could think of
and took my sister by the hand. For a long time
we just stood there, at the sink, looking into the mirror,
making sure we were still there. And later,
when she asked if she could sleep with me,
I moved my pillow over and rearranged the sheets.
I didn’t know how to explain our father
didn’t want half of anything—not me, or her—
just the two-lane road, taking him into the fog
of scotch and almond orchards.
Gun
My son grabs a plastic hanger,
points the silver part on top
and proclaims it his gun.
I’ve been looking for you, he says,
and decides he’s going to shoot me.
Then you won’t have a mommy, I say.
My voice measured, as I try to hide
this new fear over his words.
He’s only three, you see, but insists
he’s going to shoot up all the bad guys.
I tell him we don’t shoot people.
Not ever. Do you understand?
Oh, yeah? he says, eyeing a row
of hard-backed books, holding stories
of the people in peril I love.
Then I’ll shoot up this book,
he laughs, and quick pokes the tip,
of what I remind myself is
only a hanger, into the spine.
Only then I lose it and rip it
out of his small hands, demanding he stop
this talk of violent behavior.
Downstairs. Right now.
Like a soldier, I command—
Eat your breakfast. Get dressed.
I shove a sack into his backpack,
jerk open the door. Point to the garage.
On the way to pre-school, he whispers
from his car-seat that he was only kidding.
Mommy, he says, I didn’t mean to kill
that book. And I sigh, relieved,
he’s teaching me forgiveness.
Apology
I drank
the lemonade
in the blue
glass.
The day
was so hot—
It was
just sitting there,
on your desk.
I thought
I could resist.
But, no—
It was so icy.
I sipped it down.
I even used
your straw.
Third Grade
When the class told the substitute
she’d worn the skirt with fading flowers
two days in a row, she told them
rice from her sister’s wedding
lined the pockets:
small-tipped pieces of sky,
the stars of last night falling.
During recess, all the girls
wanted to hold her hand—
And later, after the last bell,
a poem was perched on her desk:
folded into an origami swan,
asleep inside its feathers.
The Teacher Observes Trees
With the First Grade
Look, over there—
Is it a dogwood or a maple,
the teacher asks,
under the impression
she’s leading this discussion.
The branches look like legs
of a horse,
running into thunder—
A girl in front answers,
forgetting to raise her hand.
The teacher points to another,
showing off its deciduousness.
Someone in back explains:
It has a nice coat of wind and rain.
The teacher taps the windowpane
and asks whoever’s listening
to please locate their favorite.
All eyes turn to the hummingbird,
hovering at the fence.
Never mind the tree in full bloom.
As Birds Do
The birds have started to sing.
They’re so easy to please.
The sun comes up and they think they’re in
heaven. —Sy Safransky
We, too, have winged lives.
Some even cry, barefoot, on the back porch—
Late in spring, imitating the starling.
Others love to nest for nesting’s sake.
Good advice. Like going to the source
And really looking, before you blindly believe.
Some have unshakeable faith.
They don’t need to question why
The feeder, now empty, swings
On the branch of the bud-bare tree.
There are murmurs in the darkest corners
Of the most barren yard: soft sounds
We may never hear or pay attention to.
Like the mourning doves, flying in a long arc
Across a steel-grey sky. Look up.
See their outlines? A willingness,
You might decide, to merge with clear intention.
Believe, or not, in everything.
Today’s Topic: Rocks
I’m about to explain—
but everyone loves rocks.
So I get out of the way
and listen.
That one looks like a dog
with white spots.
Or the Earth, spinning—
Watch, like this.
I hold up another and offer it
to an eight-year-old
whose questions trail after me.
So we can write about anything?
The universe of their imaginations
expand until they’re all deep inside
their own jagged, smooth, lopsided
poems of rocky wildness.
His becomes a sparrow—
sun for wings, feathers for flight.
Hers, a lost memory, turning
into a never-ending bend in time.
Later, walking to my car,
I carry the rocks I’ve collected—
alive again, after being inside
so many small hands.
A Child Wakes in the Middle of the Night
Standing by my bed, he whispers Mommy.
Then grips my hand, explaining
You have to come quick— Right now.
It’s important, he says, leading me
out the back door, wind cartwheeling
through wet grass where he asks me to go
to help him find the rock his father gave him.
The one he dropped into the make-believe
pond he was fishing, moonlight spilling
into the redwoods, where I find myself
wrapped in a white robe, my tired uh-huhs
confirming his belief in the invisible world
he insists I travel— his young life
overgrown with curiosity, Blackbird’s flight
a shadow I pray will protect him
as he finds his way through the miles
of stories he loves— Not from a book,
from your mouth, he demands, asking
if I’ll tell him how when I was little
and couldn’t sleep, my mother let me retrace
my steps through a rainy garden
to find what I thought I had lost.
Back Through the Night
Dead five years,
Dad visits now
through the side-yard.
There’s soup on the stove,
I tell him, but he insists
he’s no longer hungry.
He calls me Angel Girl
again, moving back
through the night
I’m not allowed to enter—
to take his hands into mine;
to keep him safe from himself
forever.
Reconstructing the Heart
Maybe it’s the steady beat
and rainy rhythm
you want to reclaim—
If so, you must trust
you can love
each chamber for all it does
and does not yet understand.
You must reach past the old sadness,
the frayed regret folded beneath
winter’s long black dress.
No more hiding.
Though sometimes the old urgency
whispers back: Come save me.
Your feelings, a collection
of glass beads. You sit and restring,
wondering if it’s forgiveness you seek
or an unfurled openness.
One breath, then another—
the forever expanse of the sea.
Light Becomes What It Touches
There was a child went forth every day;
And the first object he look’d upon,
That object he became
—Walt Whitman
The sandbox is a desert
the child insists—
we all have to cross for water.
His branch, a sword
he waves at the air.
When he pokes the invisible tiger,
he looks over his shoulder
promising he’s strong enough
to save Mommy and Daddy;
his dog & cat— even the babies
trapped in burning buildings.
Today, tired, I sit on a bench
at his favorite park and continue
to speak the alphabet’s ninth letter:
a pushy pronoun, elbowing out
everything gold-hued, crooked,
sandy and imaginary.
I think— I know—
I say it, over and over.
Until, at last, I notice
how fast he’s grown—
his life, draped like a cape,
wrapping us both in particles
of shadow and light.
Waiting With Maddie Whose Dad
Moved Away & Whose Mom is Late
After the holiday concert,
I stand on the blacktop
near the doors of the locked
auditorium and admire
the moon’s widening halo—
the world at a tilt;
the night’s hushed wisdom
in the form of an eleven-year-old,
whispering how that bright
spotlight makes her feel
everything at home’s
going to be all right.
Infinity
From birth until two it was all about the breast.
He nursed when he was bored, scared, hungry.
At three, his life was a fire truck. He lived the red shine,
the sirens, even the flames that time he yelled, Dial 911!
At five, the alphabet’s dips and curves took over his imagination.
But now, it’s all about numbers and scores; size and speed.
Who can get to the car, to school, back home the fastest.
He shoots outside the key for a three pointer;
grows out of another pair of Nikes.
At breakfast, he asks for toast with two pats of butter,
cut into equal squares. His young life is filled
with facts he shares: The cheetah is the fastest land animal.
A cheetah could kill Clive. His cat listens with closed eyes.
At night, the smell of soap rises from his body,
the quarter moon pressed against a jet-black sky.
He rests his head on my shoulder and tells me he loves me
more than all the stars in all the galaxies combined,
multiplied by 29. I tell him I love him more than all
the grains of sand. Oh yeah? he revs up. Well, I love you
more than what you just said plus what I just said,
plus all the fleas on all the dogs, including the dead dogs.
I remind him it’s late and he’ll be up early tomorrow
and get to do life all over again in a different size
and speed, my heart swelling as I gaze at this boy
once just a tiny seed. I love you more than infinity,
I whisper, turning out the light. And into the dark, his voice
trails after me, Mom, Infinity’s not a number.
Acknowledgments
Thank you to the editors and readers of the following literary journals and anthologies in
which these poems first appeared some with different titles or in slightly different versions.
america’s review: “After the Divorce”
Angel Face: “Impermanence & Nap Time”
Hungry Mind Review: “Infinity”
MEMOIR (and): “Gun”
Poetry East: “A Child Wakes in the Middle of the Night;” “As Birds Do”
Runes: “When They Thought We Were Asleep”
The Teacher’s Voice: “The Teacher Observes Trees With the First Grade;”
“The Nothing”
Tiferet: “Brown Spider”
“Childhood,” “The Boy With Red Hair” and “Light Becomes What It Touches” were first
published online at www.hotmetalpress.net.
“I’ll Tell You a Secret” was included in My Song is the Light (CPITS Statewide Anthology,
2007).
“After the Divorce” was reprinted in 100 Parades (CPITS Anthology, 2000).
“Mirage” was first published in Marin Poetry Center Anthology (Volume Three, 2000).
“Third Grade” was included in A Flame of Words (CPITS Anthology, 1999), Marin Poetry
Center Anthology (Volume Three, 2000) and in Sister (Conflu:X Press, 2004).
“A Child Wakes in the Middle of the Night” was awarded first prize in the 2004 American Pen
Women’s Soul-Making Literary Competition.
Further thanks to my students for their trust; to my colleagues in the California Poets in the
Schools program for their inspiration; to school teachers everywhere, the unsung heroes; to
my family and friends for their shining light; and a big hug to Collin B.T. Prell, who calls me
back to my heart.
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