Kenzie Allen
Kenzie Allen is a Haudenosaunee poet and multimodal artist. An Indigenous Nations Poets (In-Na-Po) Fellow, James Welch Prize winner, and finalist for the National Poetry Series, she is the author of Cloud Missives (Tin House, 2024). She is a direct descendant of the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin.
PATHOLOGY
I used to have a depression
on the ring finger
of my right hand
where I would crush
a pencil against it
while writing. You tell me
the body makes room
for our favorite ways, bones thicken
like pearls from the heft
of a child. The teeth will alter
their common alignment, to pocket
a pipe-stem, to mention
malnutrition. The twisted foot
betrays a man bent in the mines
—the chipped skull is a keyhole
to let angels in. The cracked rib
healed over or partially knit
proclaims care or some survival.
The pelvic girdle a vessel, widens,
billows at its sutures
whereas the male’s remains heart-shaped
heart-shaped and rigid.
We’re I left-handed, my right tibia
would be lighter and more slender.
Were I beaten enough, even this
would be written in my bones.
ORANGE MOON OVER JOHNSON
Low in the sky like love drunk
or regular drunk, whatever spirits
made you bark and howl
as the moon silvered on.
Havisham paced for years
before the fire came, trailing
her train as a snow-plough, raised
dust banks along every unused
room. I had no hand to grip to know
what is small about me,
why I construct pyramids
from discarded pistachio shells,
the shredded fans I make
of any paper left in my pale
hands. The river ploughs through
granite leavings, what man thought
to be rid of under covered bridges:
an old red door, dozens of road signs,
the twisted spine of a sled
nose deep in the stream, busted
windows which the painters
heal in their rendering, revisionists
who give up desirables to thrift,
and all else to water.
THE HEREAFTER
Don’t mention atonement.
Cedars do not atone for blocking light;
no tribunal for the fox
in clever murder of the hare.
We should not hold tigers accountable
for desperation. I’m told
love is helpless, love as a typewriter
crashing into the dark skin
of a lake.
What retribution for the haunted
photographs
of the exiled home, the erased?
My father looks through my pictures—
You’ve gone through some things, it’s clear.
Don’t dwell on the eyes.
You’ve been living empty of what made you.
What vengeance for that
which is already gone?
We cannot know what is deserved.
Double Yolk extends gratitude to the Iowa Review and Hermeneutic Chaos, which first featured “Pathology” and “Orange Moon Over Johnson” respectively.