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Carolynn Kingyens’ debut book of poetry, Before the Big Bang Makes a Sound (Kelsay Books. 2020), can be ordered through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, McNally Jackson and a few independent bookstores in NYC. In addition to poetry, she writes essays, book and film reviews, flash and short fiction. Carolynn resides in New York with her husband and two amazing daughters.

Compartmentalize

Carolynn Kingyens

You got to hear this. World’s a hungry place.
And the darkest things are the hungriest,
and they’ll eat what shines.
– Stephen King, Doctor Sleep

I wish I could
compartmentalize
like the REDRUM boy
in Kubrick’s film
The Shining,
who can lock away
his monsters
in all kinds
of impenetrable,
mental boxes
like the old hag
in Room 237.

Once I imagined you
locked away
in a soundproof room
still squawking
like some mute,
animated chicken:
head bobbing,
wing-arms flailing.

I laughed,
but it was
a nervous laugh.
When the therapist
mentioned enmeshment,
I’d envisioned
a spider web –
intricate as a lace doily
covering an entrance
of a doorway,
waiting for a hapless,
blissful bug
to buzz through
to its inevitable
entrapment:
its iridescent wings
frantically flailing
until the end.

— Carolynn Kingyens
Published in the Red Eft REVIEW

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