These are notes to lightning in my bedroom. A star forged from linen thread and patches. Purple, yellow, red like diamond suckers, children of the star gleam on sweaty nights. The quilt unfolds against sheets, moving, warm clouds of Chinook. It covers my cuts, my red birch clusters under pine. Under it your
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Wisconsin
In January 2017, the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts & Letters named Karla Huston the poet laureate of Wisconsin. She is the author of the poetry collection A Theory of Lipstick (Main Street Rag, 2013), which received an Outstanding Achievement Award from the Wisconsin Library Association. She lives in Appleton, Wisconsin.
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poems
poem
1984
poem
2013
After skimming the Sunday Times, Dad turned to the back of the magazine
and tore out the crossword puzzle for his mother in Wisconsin—
as routine as my calligraphy class on Saturdays, flute practice
exactly twenty minutes on school nights
and astringent twice daily. I loved
poem
2016
I.
A soap-opera rising and sinking of bodies,
melt of glaciers, flamboyant sculpture of waves—
west wind at thirty knots—
this serial archipelago the drama of centuries.
Forgotten Steamboat Island
swallowed
