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Nadine Klassen

Sixteen Songs for the Catbird

The night after your birthday, I dreamt I visited you in Colorado,
which was a field in New York City, wet

as a mountain’s top, after a storm had opened
​& ran across the crowds of seven

lives we had brought here -
everyone we have been, everyone
 
we gave to a future. Everyone we are
because of how our mothers have loved us.
 
& I forgot her face,
I bit into my own voice - hungry for myself.
 
If you walked down all of the streets of New York,
it would take a little over one hundred days,
 
& you’d arrive again & again at the little finger
of time & ask for one more way
 
to know yourself. Cut Colorado’s mountains with a swiss pocket
knife into Switzerland six times one night & eat
 
their one thousand peaks by dawn.
Back in your apartment, which was a Loft
 
in Midtown Manhattan,
your love was lying in their jeans and t-shirt
 
in a puddle of Cepheus’ light, pouring
through the skylights in the middle of the kitchen,
 
just feeling the light in my body being held by itself.
& even though I had prepared
 
for it until it had become aftercare,
I still wore my mother’s outfit, her rings & makeup.
 
& I know what I took that plane for, why I came to Colorado
in midnight’s baffle.
 
Why I tied my sheets in knots & hung them
into your front door: to climb those high shelves
 
in your kitchen, a catbird in my hands, an olive branch
of my own hair & jump into the flood.

Biography

Picture
photography by Sofie Kohaupt
Nadine Klassen (she/her) is a German poet, whose work focuses on mental health, identity and relationships. It has been published by Anti-Heroin Chic, Olney, Sky Island Journal and others. She lives in her hometown with her boyfriend and their dog. Find her on Instagram: @nadineklassen.writer
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ISSN 2639-426X
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    • Issue 24
    • Issue 23
    • Issue 22
    • Issue 21
    • Issue 20
    • Issue 19
    • Issue 18
    • Serenity
    • Issue 17
    • The Audio Room
    • Issue 16
    • Issue 15
    • Issue 14
    • Play It Again
    • Issue 13
    • Issue 12
    • Issue 11
    • Issue 10
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    • Issue 8
    • Issue 7
    • Issue 6
    • Hand to Mouth
    • Issue 5
    • Issue 4
    • Issue 3
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    • Issue 1
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