Two poems by Nathan Kemp

Lonely Isn’t Right

My heart should be doing handsprings.
There should not be a hollowness

in my stomach. My thirsty soul tries to melt snow
on the stove. The same smell of wet clothing.

The morning is getting on in shambles
I haven’t room for. The numbness begins

to grow inside me. I hadn’t said that for a long time,
but now I say it automatically,

like a precarious nerve struck over and over. I call
not very loudly because I need to conserve my strength.

A secret part of me likes my body, as if
it were some alien instrument to be used

to its precise limit. There is magic in my pace
to test it. I take to the woods in winter,

ice granules sprouting silver in the sun.
I feel a wild rush when I know I’m not in a bad spot.

I clear snow from stumps and fallen trees
or stamp little holes in the snow to sit in.

This blood in my ears is only a sound, a loud
plunk I struggle to get out of my head.

It is most unnoticeable when I do not feel it.
An angling shaft of sunlight brings it out.

The world falls away, leaving only a fierce singing
within me, an unuttered music that overflows

everywhere that I am alone in. There’s a craziness
at the finish and it’s contagious.