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Best Poems Written by Kitty Ewiakiat

Below are the all-time best Kitty Ewiakiat poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

Details | Kitty Ewiakiat Poem

Fracture

The night has broken herself,
thinking of you.
Even now,
no solace
for the fiery pocket of hate
that I hold in my fists
still burning.

I played the piano
side-by-side with her,
Easter Sunday
where no sun broke
through
the ossuary
you called our home.

She slumped upon my lap
suddenly,
like a grief poisoned,
and
her eyes rolled back
into themselves,
looking for reasons
beyond you.

The music stopped
with the snap-back
click of the neck.
And I try to find the tune
in memory,
but the sharp gasp
of disbelief
resonates instead.

And then, recalling
the blank
paste
of your face,
slapped
hap-hazard
on the stair,
downward spiral,
as she lay
still:
contused and dying.

There are many
things I've forgiven
about
that day
those days
those years
of tragedy,

But
my own silent
cowardice
slaughters
more of my
sunrises
than you do.

Callous now,
the shadow
of you
eclipsing
the moon of my mouth
forever
silent-screaming frozen.

The tomb rock
rolls back
and I emerge,
as if from
crucifixion:
the images
resurrected

as the nightmare
rift
between
then and now
splits itself
in two:
her still-life portrait body,
the bloody ghost
of you.

Notes: I wrote this poem on Eater Sunday, exactly thirty years after my father beat my mother to a pulp. She was hospitalised for three weeks, and no one thought to notify my sister and I, who were at boarding school at the time. The imagery pertains to Easter, to my rebirth from trauma. Although cathartic, it served as a reminder to the horrors of a violent youth.

Details | Kitty Ewiakiat Poem

My Kind of Town

My Kind of Town

You said I’d find my freedom
There, where the cliff crags slip
into the dead thud of ocean:
Not yet kindred
Not yet able to place
Or misplace me.

I lost my children to the rain
There,
In that place
In that drowned sorrow.

A leap of faith to fall
Into the arms of the screeching rocks
Your abyss
Your farmland
With only the company of cows and crows,
The greens that hurt the eyes,
And the bellowed creek of the townsfolk
Blank-faced and silent as your northern hemisphered
Grey suits and Sunday-sausaged brunch.

It was not your fault Or theirs.
But the pull of the sun
And the cupped hands of indigence
Called me home:
Swallowed and goosed
To the south.

And here,
The dry-mouthed moon
Looks after my people
Cloaked in poverty, yet singing
Colourful mourning songs
In this,
the callous town 
I call my own.

Details | Kitty Ewiakiat Poem

Letting Go

Letting go
Every parent’s grief: 
those aches that root in your children. 
Not the Band-Aid kind. 
The ones that blade-slice and twist in the belly. 
Those unkind words on the playground, 
those unattainable desires,
 that feeling of otherness. 
Those that we cannot heal with a kiss or an embrace. 
They clutch them in their fists like amulets, 
not yet knowing how to let them go free. 
And the twist of the mouth, 
the hunch of the shoulders. 
A colossal agony released through the glaze of the eye. 

They’re such small things, tears.