by Kami Westhoff

I did not want to write this poem. I’m sick of the street
lined with cotton-candy blossoms, how their scent douses
my clothes when I pass, their skin-thin petals all fuss and flutter.

I’m done trying to describe what spring does to the eye—
how it expects the pupil to swallow the tree’s scaffold
and curve, the slope of muscle from crown to crotch.

I’m over what it might mean when my daughters find
a wing-cricked sparrow in my driveway, its pinprick
wounds nothing like starlight reversed.

Who cares how quickly the storm stuffed the sky
with its charcoal clouds, pattered my daughters,
who were worried about the sparrow, with pellets of pearl.

Wait. Let’s be clear. I’m trying to use the right words
for things—too much pain erupts when we mistake
one thing for another. It was hail, not pearls—

just what happens when updrafts whisk water drops
high enough to freeze, but can’t bear the weight
of what they’ve become.


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Kami Westhoff is the author of the story collection, The Criteria, and three poetry chapbooks including Sleepwalker, the winner of the 2016 Dare to Be Contest from Minerva Rising Press. Her work has appeared in such journals as Carve, Meridian, Third Coast, Hippocampus, Booth, Redivider, and West Branch. She teaches creative writing at Western Washington University in Bellingham, WA.

by Kami Westhoff

You close your mouth
to the spoon’s cool curve,
not impressed with the cubes
of summer melon. Soon, you
will refuse other favorites,
maple nut ice cream, clusters
of chocolate-bound
peanuts.

We are told it’s a blessing,
this gradual refusal of what
you love. Your face still
bursts into relief when you
see us, we are swallowed
in the split-second when
we are daughters a mother
just wants to hold. Though
the nurses won’t say it, we
know this is cruel—
this reminder of who
you once were, of what
you’ve since lost.

We want you summer
again. When we’d watch
you half the melon, scoop
the mess of seeds from its
center, carve flesh so carefully
none was lost to the rind.

We didn’t get it, but now we know
you were teaching us everything
we’d ever need to know about love.
The way it halves us. Slices us.
Carves the best of us from what
cannot be swallowed. Closes
its mouth to the rest. 

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Kami Westhoff is the author of Sleepwalker, winner of Minerva Rising's Dare to Be Contest, and Your Body a Bullet, co-written with Elizabeth Vignali. Her work has also appeared in various journals, including Meridian, Carve, Third Coast, The Pinch, West Branch, and Waxwing.

by Kami Westhoff

That August, smoke stitched itself to each breath’s tunneling wisp.

The lush lungs of your three-year-old tarred half-pack-a-day dark,

the veins in her eyes cragged crimson. The west was burning,

and without your repentance, your boyfriend said, you would too.

Afterward, your daughter said she didn't understand why your face

was blood-burst when her father told her to kiss you good-bye .

Or why your body, whose arms had lifted her when something 

she wanted was just out of reach, or held her back if that something

might hurt her, why it was rooms away from the lips that kissed better

every bump and bruise. 

By mid-September, your daughter’s lungs were crisped clean

with the ocean’s exhale, her sclera once more white as bone. 

The sky in the west again unflawed—nothing marring its blue

but the scribbled edges of pine trees and moody mountains.

He claimed he didn’t want to hurt you, but couldn’t argue

with a god that’s always wanted you dead. Always wanted

your blood a dark river beneath the earth’s scorched scars,

your body just the soil that swallows it.   

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Kami Westhoff’s chapbook, Sleepwalker, won the 2016 Dare to Be Award from Minerva Rising, and her collaborate chapbook, Your Body a Bullet, was published recently by Unsolicited Press. Her work has appeared in journals including Meridian, Carve, Third Coast, Phoebe, West Branch, the Pinch, and Waxwing. She teaches creative writing at Western Washington University in Bellingham, WA.