Karen George
Karen George is author of the poetry collections Swim Your Way Back (2014), A Map and One Year (2018), Where Wind Tastes Like Pears (2021), and forthcoming Caught in the Trembling Net (2024). She won Slippery Elm’s 2022 Poetry Contest, and her short story collection, How We Fracture, which won the Rosemary Daniell Fiction Prize, was released from Minerva Rising Press in January 2024. Her work appears in Adirondack Review, The Ekphrastic Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Cultural Daily, and Poet Lore. Her website is https://karenlgeorge.blogspot.com/
The Ache of Waiting
All’s skewed, zigzagged,
contorted by how squirrelly, ragged
you feel waiting for news of an outcome
you try to remain hopeful about, but
as time plods, writhes, your body seesaws
between a sense of density & floating,
not being connected to this world.
Was it hours ago you dealt
a game of solitaire on the narrow
table before you? When
was your last play? You stare
at the empty, glaring-yellow chair across
from you, its seat morphed
into a checkerboard, its back gone
wobbly, legs knotted. Anxiety elongates
your legs, arms, torso, neck, pulled
to the point of uncoupling.
Maybe you shouldn’t have guzzled
the sherry. A memory tugs you
somewhere; next you’re snapped
back into the room, your gaze on the ace
& four of diamonds, the four
spades & ace of clubs—numb to what
the suits & pips denote. The left
side of you in light, the right shadowed.
Hasn’t your life been one moment
of disjoint after another?
A large, unlit lamp above you
has gone transparent.
Are you next?
~ Inspired by The Patience, Georges Braque’s 1942 painting
