Tricia Knoll
Tricia Knoll’s poetry appears widely in journals as diverse as Kenyron Review and New Verse News as well as nine collections, both chapbook and full-length book. Two collections came out in 2024: Wild Apples (poems of downsizing and moving 3,000 miles) from Fernwood Press and The Unknown Daughter (persona poems of people who react to a fictive Tomb of the Unknown Daughter) from Finishing Line Press. Knoll is a Contributing Editor to Verse Virtual. Website: triciaknoll.com
Walking With the Dead
The specter of a Javanese shadow puppet,
a skeletal stick figure meant to be dancing backlit
hangs on the wall. Four of us sit in armchairs:
a Jew, a Quaker, an atheist, a Unitarian.
This could feel like a joke about people
slumped at a bar, a granfalloon, but
we are poets who gather to talk poetry.
The draft in our hands is about one poet’s
dead who went too early but hangs around
without a passport. A gray cat weaves
through the legs of the coffee table, rubs
my calves. I recall that my cat Bella
returned two weeks after her death
to walk on my bed at midnight.
We don’t turn on a lamp. February sun
reflects off patches of ice, slips knife-edged
through the window. We ask
where the dead reside, these Others.
Head? Heart? In air?
Lost sons, a husband, a lover, a pal
from childhood. I watched mourners
who clutched roses at Navalny’s funeral;
the priest covered his face with lace.
Who lets him go? Who holds him?
Sun falls on my shoulders.
Psychologists make up terms for sensed
presence. Bereavement hallucination.
Imaginal relationships. Talking to the dead.
Respecting the incompleteness of lives.
Refusing to admit the dead have gone.
We accept silence. Green grapes
on a star-patterned plate tempt me.
The cat jumps into sun that splashes
the back of my chair. I am backlit,
shadow self. Hello Bella.
My neck itches. This cat presents
herself as a medium at a séance,
what I’d never say here.
Each hears someone hovering near.
I wonder who will break our silence.
Please, not the puppet. Nor the cat.
Slowly my winter shadow stretches.
How tall I am.
