Kristen Henderson Quotes

“And no matter what closet we were thrown in, up what river we were sold for an embarrassment, or worse, traded for a bottle of gin-- we’d carry on in playful stitches, friends ‘til the end…which came sooner than wished.”

Love Friendship Kissing Heartbreak Girls Dolls Discarded Forsaken Playful Bottle Of Gin Tomboy Love Two Of A Kind Lesbian Poem Sold Up The River

Book:Of My Maiden Smoking

Source: Of My Maiden Smoking

“I tell you once and for all— in front of the angel pictures on the wall, that I am not a host to load-bearing ghosts or heady entities, and if I was ever holy, I have fallen far into the dense atmosphere of the living.”

Wall Holy Human Ghost Atmosphere Angels Dense Picture

Book:Drum Machine

Source: Drum Machine

“Think of the Christmas present of gashes you opened when, in an attempt to be Superman, you slid in stocking feet on a slippery wood floor and crashed half way through a window. Hopes of heroism dashed on the heels of no clear sighting of Santa.”

Childhood Disappointment Christmas Irony Injury Heroes Santa Kid Superman Stocking Feet

Book:Of My Maiden Smoking

Source: Of My Maiden Smoking

“Sure, I watched the workmen come and lower large pieces of rotten sheetrock and lift new clean panels on a pulley from that same window months ago, and I could have written then, but I must have sensed her coming, the smoker, so I waited.”

Men Window Senses Smoking Her Coming Smoker Pulley Sensed Sheetrock

Book:Drum Machine

Source: Drum Machine

“...you hold a poem that functions half as personal note and half as telescope to the heights awaiting us all.”

Poetry Loneliness Poem Alone Poems Telescope Note

Book:Drum Machine

Source: Drum Machine

“there’s no way I can sleep in any position with so much still unwritten about the glory of basements, where, with all the promise in crock pot boxes, small animals go to die, piles of laundry hide the machines, rusted tools fall into other rusted tools giving way to unsung sculpture, soiled playing cards and unmatched socks strewn atop a punched-out screen door make a shaggy parquet; and a famished, leggy fluorescent tube barely winks on the entire scene.”

Writing Poetry Glory Insomnia Laundry Ecstatic Insomniac Basement Crock Pot

Book:Drum Machine

Source: Drum Machine

“If in poetry court she was called to testify on matters where I was condemned to imprisonment: parking my ego at a broken meter, line violations, forced rhyme, dealing stanzaics to children, shooting off my mouth, getting cute, for even this latest attempt at verse, she would tell the whole truth, she would admit from the pit of her unsung brilliance, from all of the paintings and poems she herself has been making and storing in the vast empire of her singing soul, your Honor, my daughter is guilty of plagiarizing my cells.”

Mother Family Daughter Guilt Cells Meter Line Stanza

Book:Drum Machine

Source: Drum Machine

“what if there was an uncanny moment when all the birds were grounded from Cape Town to Juneau, and everywhere between--all feathers frozen in a universal stutter, so quick as to make a snail of light, and even Stephen Hawking's mind would miss it?”

Mind Philosophy Light Death Flight Feathers Birds Stephen Hawking Cape Town Juneau

Book:Drum Machine

Source: Drum Machine

“The outfit, tight in places, and loose in some, says as much in the buttons as it does in cuffs.”

Fashion Clothes Persona Artifice Cuffs Loose Tight Button Artless Poem Outfist Perfect Poem

Book:Of My Maiden Smoking

Source: Of My Maiden Smoking

“She was so cool, as she knew, ankles crossed at the puckered hem of granite gray sweatpants, and she also knew I was watching from the open door of the B train—watching her pose in apparent comfort at the girder of this city thoroughfare.”

Girl New York Gray City Nyc Cool Granite Hem Sweatpants B Train

Book:Drum Machine

Source: Drum Machine

“Oblong stones sink slow and sideways. Shaped by the weight of waves, dutifully vibrating nature’s lunar-bound graces, they wash ashore only for closed palms to forsake them. The cheerful will cherish them, place them on windowsills, or on graves.”

Stones Graves Beach Shore Cheerful Sinking Forsake Waves Sideways Cape Cod Wash Palm Provincetown Windowsills

Book:Of My Maiden Smoking

Source: Of My Maiden Smoking

“And the sculptors will shape the soil for the writers to stretch the seeds for the patient painters who sketch the petals they will shade in alabaster and gold. Their sweat is the rain. Maybe the jazzman will send us a rose.”

Gold Rose Jazz Soil Writers Petals Painters Alabaster

Book:Drum Machine

Source: Drum Machine

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