June 16~ CHRIS KADS

Poetry lovers, today I'm honored to bring you one half of the "gut punch" poetry prompts team...Chris Kads! Please enjoy Chris' moving poems "Job Instructions for a Caretaker" and "Missing the Tide," which won second place in the 63rd Glendon & Kathryn Swarthout awards for undergraduate poetry (audio forthcoming from Arizona State University). Thank you, Chris, for sharing your gift for words with SHINE international poetry series!

Job Instructions for a Caretaker

Cut the chicken into bite-sized pieces.

Slice the bread.

Tear yourself in half.

Tuck the rainbow pin in your apron pocket, your hair back in a bun.

Watch the edges while you toast the ones of sourdough - his favorite.

Resist the temptation to stick them in your shirt - to coat them in sweat.

Remember I don’t have a lot of teeth anymore
and the classic He was raised in a different time.

Roll a delivery cart past a wall of ghosts,
faces that were flushed not even two days prior.

Stop at the door decorated in truck bumper stickers. Honk if you like honkers.

Pretend the vinyl-covered wood is his flesh when your knuckles rap on it.

Prepare for the spit as the animal opens his cage.

Missing the Tide

We strip down
sea turtle paper,
make a bathroom
white again.

I was twelve when I saw
my first sea turtle.
Twelve when I was told,
He would’ve died in the wild
and watched a being
of the sea refuse to face
a wall of glass.

It’s easy to know
the cause of death
of people like the man
behind the foggy window.
The man with the yellowed curtains
and the sea turtle wallpaper.

There’s no need
for an autopsy
when you’ve tasted the coffee
sugared with salt
and you’ve heard “Rachel”
called “Susan”
and you’ve seen him
cry into a plate
of beige pink puree.

It’s easy to know
when you finger dust
off frames of his strangers,
when their new home
is a plastic garbage bag,
prepared to be laid
in a Goodwill grave.

Sometimes,
when I clean these rooms,
look at paper that becomes dust
in my palm,
I wonder if,
when faced with a life in glass,
it’s better to drown
in the sea.

Chris Kads is a Barrett Honors student at Arizona State University majoring in literature with a certificate in writing. In and out of school she works on creating picture books, young adult short stories, poems, and novels. She has works upcoming in the Blood+Honey Magazine, the Canyon Voices Literary Magazine, and the Pillowtalk Magazine. Additionally, her poem "Missing the Tide" placed second in the 63rd Glendon and Kathryn Swarthout Awards. A previous retirement home worker, Chris strives to shed light on the complex and often difficult experiences workers and residents face. She hopes to make her family, boyfriend, friends, and two dogs proud with her literary pieces.

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