Lawrence Kessenich won the 2010 Strokestown International Poetry Prize. His poetry has been widely published, including in the Sewanee Review, and Poetry Ireland. His chapbook was published by Pudding House Publications in 2008. In 2012, his poem Underground Jesus was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Kessenich has also published essays, one of which was featured on NPR’s This I Believe in 2010 and appears in the anthology This I Believe: On Love. A number of his plays have been produced. He is the author of the novel Cinnamon Girl. He is a Somerville Bagel Bard.

Portrait of a Woman with Red Hair

For Bridget

Lawrence Kessenich

She was the first dead person

I had ever seen. I was a little girl,

holding my brother’s hand on the way

to school. And suddenly there she was,

lying on gray pavement, startling red hair

spread out like a magnificent cape. At first

I thought she was asleep, the people around

trying to wake her. Later I asked my brother,

“Was she dead?” And he said, “Yes.”

I am a painter now and it’s her hair

I can’t forget, red hair flowing

from her head, a bloody halo around

a dead white face. You’d think I’d paint her,

but composing a portrait requires

objectivity, and her image

still unnerves me. She was young.

She was beautiful. She was the first

dead person I had ever seen.

Painting her would be like resurrecting

a nightmare, without my brother’s hand

to lead me past it, his voice to reassure me

that the dead can’t harm us. Now, I have seen

so many people dead, am not so far

from death, myself. Now, I know death

waits around a corner for me, as it waited

for her. On bad nights I see my hennaed hair

splayed like blood on the street.

— Lawrence Kessenich

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