SAMANTHA TERRELL - POET / EIC, SHINE Poetry Series
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Dec.11~ KIM BARSAMIAN

12/11/2025

 
Poetry fans, welcome back! Today we're shining the spotlight on Rhode Island writer, Kim Barsamian, with her ethereal poem "Underwater Kiss." Thank you, Kim, for sharing your words with SHINE international poetry series!

Underwater Kiss

Time is
measured
by the breath
we share
as we sink
into the abyss
with fluidity,
immersed in a
frothy fizz
lightly dancing
across our skin
holding us in stasis
as we grasp onto
the moment
and we sink together
and we think we can
make a moment
last forever
and we are everything
there is nothing else
our lips meet
our eyes close
a little bubble of air
escapes us
like a dream
a lifetime of
wanting
has us
holding on
holding on
but we slowly
rise to the top
gasping for air.

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Kim Barsamian is a recently retired school librarian from Cranston, Rhode Island. She has been writing poetry for years because of the joy and purpose it brings to her life. She writes poetry about people and nature and how they intertwine. She participates in poetry readings and poetry groups in Rhode Island.



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    SHINE - International Poetry Series

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    Click here for submissions and more
    From the international poetry community, we have a "luxury of stars," as Sylvia Plath might say, and it is SHINE's honor to provide a home for their words with the online Spotlight series as well as SHINE Quarterly. Click on the logo above to learn more. And...keep writing, keep shining!
    In poetry,
    Samantha Terrell, EIC
    SYLVIA PLATH
    Stars Over the Dordogne

    Stars are dropping thick as stones into the twiggy
    Picket of trees whose silhouette is darker
    Than the dark of the sky because it is quite starless.
    The woods are a well. The stars drop silently.
    They seem large, yet they drop, and no gap is visible.
    Nor do they send up fires where they fall
    Or any signal of distress or anxiousness.
    They are eaten immediately by the pines.

    Where I am at home, only the sparsest stars
    Arrive at twilight, and then after some effort.
    And they are wan, dulled by much travelling.
    The smaller and more timid never arrive at all
    But stay, sitting far out, in their own dust.
    They are orphans. I cannot see them. They are lost.
    But tonight they have discovered this river with no trouble,
    They are scrubbed and self-assured as the great planets.

    The Big Dipper is my only familiar.
    I miss Orion and Cassiopeia's Chair. Maybe they are
    Hanging shyly under the studded horizon
    Like a child's too-simple mathematical problem.
    Infinite number seems to be the issue up there.
    Or else they are present, and their disguise so bright
    I am overlooking them by looking too hard.
    Perhaps it is the season that is not right.

    And what if the sky here is no different,
    And it is my eyes that have been sharpening themselves?
    Such a luxury of stars would embarrass me.
    The few I am used to are plain and durable;
    I think they would not wish for this dressy backcloth
    Or much company, or the mildness of the south.
    They are too puritan and solitary for that--
    When one of them falls it leaves a space,

    A sense of absence in its old shining place.
    And where I lie now, back to my own dark star,
    I see those constellations in my head,
    Unwarmed by the sweet air of this peach orchard.
    There is too much ease here; these stars treat me too well.
    On this hill, with its view of lit castles, each swung bell
    Is accounting for its cow. I shut my eyes
    And drink the small night chill like news of home.

    ~~~

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