*

Karen Klein, Associate Professor Emerita, Brandeis University, English/American Literature. Humanities, Women’s Studies faculty, retired after 37 years of teaching. After retirement, her energies were focused on creative activities: contemporary modern dance performances; haiku & contemporary lyric publications: first full-length lyric poetry This Close (Ibbetson Press,2022); chapbook Embodied (Finishing Line Press, 2025); Circularity (Toronto, 2025) Scott Ponemone, linocuts; Karen Klein, haiku. Currently working on poems for a book about growing up in Fargo, North Dakota.

grammar

Karen Klein

I.

not punctuation    not a black dot
signifying the end of a sentence  or multiple ellipses

but a duration   beginning          set timer   long short       end
this periodicity does not appear  on your desktop or

corporate calendar               presence felt   marking time
in female bodies  monthly measurement

tidal blood flow   set by our reproductive fate
the moon is our model   our shining guide    our jailer

private yet universal meanings for late   missed
at sixteen I have a boyfriend    am late and scared

telling mom leads to the gynecologist’s office
where I bleed

mom and my surprised relief     she says
if you had been        it would have killed your father

What does my father have to do with it?

II.

years marked with lunar memories
gut cramps double over       moods circle the moon and spin

plans made  unmade       welcome times when missed
a new future           ungrammatical times when missed    what future

I was mother of three    then late
raging       waiting          praying        waiting

wanting to reject     the lunar contract
unbidden    at birth

not mine     to reject or accept
all the eggs   already in my infant ovaries

my powerlessness     my moonbody’s power
which will eventually cease

How then will my body measure time’s flow?

— Karen Klein

To have your work considered for the Lyrical send it to:
Doug Holder, 25 School St.; Somerville, MA 02143
dougholder@post.harvard.edu