Grace Cavalieri Presents Poems & Poets

Grace Cavalieri
Grace Cavalieri

Grace is Maryland’s Tenth Poet Laureate. She has 31 books and chapbooks of poetry and 26 produced short-form and full-length plays. Her newest poetry publication is  The Long Game: Poems, Selected & New  (2023.) Grace founded and still produces "The Poet and the Poem" on public radio, celebrating 48 years on-air. The show’s recorded at the Library of Congress and transmitted via Pacifica Network. She holds two Allen Ginsberg Poetry Awards (1993 & 2013), A Paterson Poetry Prize, a Pen Fiction Award, the Bordighera Award for Poetry, The CPB Silver Metal, the Associated Writers' Program George Garrett Award for 2013; and, Highest Recognition from The National Commission On Working Women.

Bluebirds

In the small grey hut of self-doubt where the ceilings are too low for you to stand,
by the road where your friend would only drive you half-way home,
next to the trench of holes filled with grief and wrong choices,
where it's better not to know how you should do things a different way,
tulips droop from their vases,
and death has never had so many faces.
 
That's the time to go out at dusk when even the deaf talk softly;
Don't look at the hummingbird hovering
afraid of the bubbles rising in their nectar -
Bluebirds know of danger, their air made of smoke -
large wings of prey
never far distant -
Try to find the bluebirds in their church of air,
star seeds of sound that crystallize then burst.
 
© Grace Cavalieri, all rights reserved
Go to Poetry by Grace Cavalieri

 

Kayla Keegun

Kayla Keegun

Once in a while you just luckily happen to meet a poet that refreshes the world. Kayla Keegun speaks with a clarity that only comes from authenticity; so much so that we say this is what poetry is-- honesty, lack of artifice, a message that leaps right to the soul. Then we say Thank You.   —Grace Cavalieri

Kayla Keegun is an emerging poet. With an academic and professional background in the field of communications, she has always found her place among words. She draws inspiration from the quieter elements of life, and her poems reflect the nuances of growth, pain, and introspection. When not writing, she enjoys giving long monologues in the kitchen, trying to be a long-distance runner, crafting, and playing the banjo.

 

The Vulnerability of: Waiting

4.26.2026

There’s nothing hidden–
there in that place of waiting.
Exposed and wet my pants were soaked and all because I could not stay waiting.

Every single summer
the AC came and went.
My brother glues his shoes
and to cheat the heat I slept with not
a stitch of clothing on.
My bones even weeping sweat
and there,
still the bill man comes.

So I walked to work instead.
Collecting rain like questions.
A patchwork brown Picasso travels up my calves and thighs
but there is comfort in it.
How piously fulfilling is the raining on my pity

Self-imposed or not it still stings now
– and I remember–

Better to keep moving
than to be seen.
Waiting

We always joked he had a second family somewhere.

He always hummed too happy when he was nervous. It never did and did not now
mask the strain. 
He bought other trinkets too. A vacuum, a Powerpuff doll. 
But the brake pads are slipping again. Barely keeping traction in the blur. 

Sacrifices for his frequent absence.

The car slid-jerked to a stop.
from his brow-wiped a raindrop.
He stomped hard on the keys. So big so bold. Something a hero should do to 
reflect his loyalty. But the action didn’t match up with the sound. 

Exertion for unclaimed taxation.

There was precious cargo in the back. 
This cake, he thought,
better save my marriage. 

Sliding icing 

You’re worth so much more than this. |Rule of thumb|
Version 1 of 6

It’s striking how I see it in even the shape of my hands. The thumb specifically.
When it falls unconsciously to rest. 
It strikes me. 
The similarity.

You see, I swore an oath on bended knee that never 
Ever 
would I be. I chanted, recanted, willing it from me. 

How then, are the shards reflected back before I chase the glare away?

I wanted to write about the good times –I
out of guilt. Maybe. 
But there were. I promise us there were. Laughter sewn in every fragment memory. I wanted to I did. 

I’m sorry Ma, I hope you never learn to read.

The is of: Blackness

The is of being –black–
There’s no way other that I know to describe it
The community of us-ness
It’s an unspoken guidance full of isms that we just kinda 
get.                     

Hmm (Well)
Ok ok, inflection not exclusion but there is a tribe of oneness that starts rising 
all within that type of praise.

I won’t try to mask what I’d love to happen.
That this (we) become a mantra as common
place 
as the ending phrase of 369.

There’s something splendid of it 
and us. 
I am only now just tuning in 
to realize.

The Falling of: Man

knee skinned
saw white
beat so bad, he saw the
light.
neither changed his choices.

choose you this day your master
Whom you will serve. 
now and hereafter

Version 2. 

Knee skinned, saw hot white.
Beat so bad he saw the light.
You chose your master.

Yet still abridged
Version 6 of 6 

It took five versions for me to feel.
Cathartic, that’s what art is. 
And even still it gleams of roughness. 

I pushed myself to the brink and finally let myself fall into the white and black and then—
I did cry. 

Somehow it was both wet and angry, a wailing shored up that shreds your fiber being, threatening 
to smother sanity. 

Breath wrapped up in a soul somewhat repented, how it seems to be so wholly open to these
feelings. 

I cried like that before. 
A boy was many years too young, a face too kind and bright for the acrid harshness of a grave. 
That’s the beauty of art—unpublished. It can hold a trauma and still be there to safely cradle us,
for another time.

Despite it all deep down I think I know you know. How much this hurts. 
Me more than you. 

We may evolve and I hope the same for you.
I’m doing this, because I love you. 

I know, 

what this last line used to be.

© Kayla Keegun, all rights reserved.
Featured Poets

Grace Cavalieri