New poem in Painted Bride Quarterly

Fall is a good season for poems. I have the first of three upcoming ones in coming issues of Painted Bride Quarterly, out now at http://pbq.drexel.edu/pbq/archives/2895. Other recent poems have been featured online in Kin. A few others are coming soon in Mead, Paper Nautilus, Bloom and Blue Lyra Review. Time to get busy and send more out! I’ll be reading some of this new work Nov. 11 at Moonstone at 7 pm with a banjo player and poet James Arthur, whose credits include The New Yorker and APR. Details are at http://www.facebook.com/events/447574501947229/. Come if you can. Moonstone is closing soon, so come celebrate its impact on Philly with me.

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My Poem “Torn” in Kin, Republished here as a Halloween treat

“Torn” by Kelly McQuain, originally published in Kin, Issue 3, September 2012.
http://wearekin.org/author/kmcquain/torn.

Torn

By Kelly McQuain

At first, it’s only a hoof where my left foot
used to be, and the only inconvenience

is a shoe that won’t fit. But then, overnight,
a nagging migraine builds to a hard nub

that sprouts five inches above my left eye—
worse than teenage acne: a horn

my hairline can’t disguise. Left eyebrow, too,
is acting up—arching, turning black—

to match half a goatee below—I shave it off;
it grows back. And the hair on my left leg

feels coarser, and now my leg is bending back
—goat’s hock curving to fetlock. I try to straighten it.

It kicks back. Tail’s the worst; it’s forked
—a bit furry, a bit skinned—darting now

through a hole in my boxers. I decide
to call in sick. And it’s true, I’m in agony:

left shoulder blade wrenching, a loud snap.
On my back, a black umbrella unfolds

into a leather wing. In the mirror, half a devil
and I wonder whether hope might spring

from my other side: First sign, a feather.

Photo from Wikipedia Commons by Hariadhi

“Torn” in Kin

Wow, what a nice surprise! Last night I was trying to update Flipboard settings and saw this poem of mine pop up on the Facebook feed in Kin’s new issue. Kin is a fun, quirky journal and I am happy to have discovered it this past year. We are Kin!
http://wearekin.org/author/kmcquain/torn
Photo from Wikipedia Commons by Hariadhi