Kathleen Hellen

respect, you know (just a little)

okay, she’s not pretty

she’s not butter icing on the cake

but you

loaf of funky chicken. you

stale baguette. a stew of i-can’t-help-myself— you

speak of “my girl” Bernadette. pretty selfish. you

happy when she’s twisting off the lids. mashing the potatoes— you

just want someone to do that thing to bread. make a loaf

that isn’t you. Truth is: you

lucky she’s not fed up with your

elbows on the table. fed up with

that toothpick in your grin.

Kathleen Hellen is the recipient of the James Still Award, the Thomas Merton Prize for Poetry of the Sacred, and prizes from the H.O.W. Journal and Washington Square Review. Her debut collection Umberto’s Night won the poetry prize from Washington Writers’ Publishing House. She is the author of The Only Country Was the Color of My Skin, Meet Me at the Bottom, and two chapbooks. Featured on Poetry Daily and Verse Daily, her work has appeared in Barrow Street, Colorado Review, Massachusetts Review, North American Review, Notre Dame Review, Pedestal, Poetry Northwest, Salamander, SmokeLong Quarterly, Southern Humanities Review, Spillway, Tar River Poetry, and elsewhere. www.kathleenhellen.com