I’m racing the sun on a dark morning, trying to write words
before it erases the god skating on my mind, 

twirling and flying like confetti, celebrating
an anniversary of birth in winter I’ve forgotten, 

calendars unopened in my lap. I no longer commit
the days but the years age me, and I no longer care

for babies though I nurse the grass of the plains
with a ditch, and the coyotes feed on its prairie dogs. 

I no longer call you but maybe I should. 
In me is an ice rink, and the girl teaches me

how to twirl, the god lifting her in a dance
no one knew how to play the music for. 

It was too celestial for the winter freeze—
all about resurrection, broken bread on tongues,

wine the blood to take us home, though we never left. 
We stayed and learned the dance. Church was one choice

and we knelt, murmured the prayers, buried the god
only because we knew the paradox of the impermanent

becoming permanent, the way the darkness was only
our spinning on an earth that choreographed our dance, 

the way somewhere the sun shines, graves open, 
as here the ditches close to let mountains hoard snow

like a prayer for the god to stay, 
like all the words I never say to you.

—First published on Facebook (13 December 2019) as the author’s 2019 Christmas Poem; appears here with her permission.

Kika Dorsey

is a poet, fiction writer, and educator who lives with her two children, husband, and Border Collie in Boulder, Colorado. She wakes up every morning and crafts poetry out of dreams, myths, her body, and her travels. While finishing her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature in Seattle, Washington, she performed her poetry with musicians and artists. Her poems have been published in Freshwater, KYSO Flash, The Columbia Review, The Comstock Review, The Denver Quarterly, The Pennsylvania Literary Journal, and numerous other journals and books. Her writing has been nominated four times for the Pushcart Prize.

Ms. Dorsey is the author of three poetry collections: Beside Herself (Flutter Press, 2010), and two published by WordTech Editions, Coming Up for Air (2018) and Rust (2016), the latter of which was reviewed by Clare MacQueen in KYSO Flash (Issue 6, Fall 2016). Ms. Dorsey is also an adjunct instructor of English at Front Range Community College. When not writing, teaching, or tutoring, she swims miles in pools, and runs and hikes in the open space of Colorado’s mountains and plains.

Author’s website: http://kikadorsey.com