Karen Kevorkian: California Poets Part 10, Four Poems

Karen Kevorkian

April 2nd, 2026

California Poets: Part X

Karen Kevorkian

Four Poems

Subduction

A car stopped on a bridge below the world spreading its patterns of boundaries

on either side tall grass heavy mud and small trees curving with the river

all was newsprint clear

one little house to live in a woman at the table reading

waking to August sun turning cars to brass

noon fired up one side of a tree trunk a bright red folder on a shelf

soon shadows edged sharp as the blades of new knives

balanced at the river’s edge she dived in, green water closed over

Memory a Site Time Edits

Like the Forum where each bonelike column

identifies this or that place or building

pristine and bleached

known doorways boarded, the little bakery’s mouthfilling

yellow tarts, a café’s leather banquettes

old men lifting small white cups of black espresso 

that life

why want it back

to the tired or bored it says nothing

the alley by the window where a desk stood

the other window by the kitchen sink, a new shelf,

unfamiliar plates

A Black Calf in the Field

In the field a black calf nuzzled the side of its cow

her sleek and round body you imagined laying hands on

to slick the short hair in one direction could you transcend

barbed wire to flounder in dry grass the sun flirts with

some surrender to the Jesus they say will take care of all things

I do not feel this is plausible though I understand surrender

last night driving outside the town a sky of patent leather sheen

along the powerline a meteor, fleeing ball of fire

It Is Just Us Making Our Exit

The color wheel shifts, red sunlight filters, lawns an eerie green from rare rain

against which small white roses suddenly bloom, specks in a tide

arms swinging a woman paces midstreet, tinyfisted hands, a rooftop star

mimes holy refuge

where inside a weighted shade cord lapping at a heat vent, a pendulum’s

widening circles, everything saying something

the angry cat hurling itself at a window, on TV someone you know acts out death

pushed to curbs bins marked Heart of Screenland, an old hotel where

the Munchkins stayed

Oz now somewhere to walk to, be waited on, order food or drink

a body washed up onshore, red neon hand in the window of a psychic life coach

dusty shop with a handpress, wall map of 19^th-century Paris, years of gridded unfolding

Author Bio:

Karen Kevorkian is an American poet based in Los Angeles. Her fourth poetry collection is Here in My Body it Feels Crowded, a chapbook (Walton Well Press, 2025). Her other poetry collections are Quivira (Three: A Taos Press, 2020), Lizard Dream (What Books Press, 2009), and White Stucco Black Wing (Red Hen Press, 2004). 

Her poems are published in the journals New American Review, Four Way Review, Furious Pure, Laurel Review, Verse Daily, Taos Journal of Poetry, Antioch Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Witness, Terminus Magazine, Massachusetts Review, Levure littéraire, Pool, Denver Quarterly, VOLT, Poetry International, Spillway, Quarterly West, Shenandoah, New World Writing, Agni Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, The Literary Review, Borderlands, the Rio Grande Review, River City Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, Archipelago, The Drunken Boat, Poetry Flash, Third Coast, Hambone, Pratik: The LA Issue, and Coiled Serpent: Poets Arising from the Cultural Quakes & Shifts in Los Angeles (Tia Chucha Press). Her fiction is published in Fiction International, Five Fingers Review, Furious Fictions, and Mississippi Review.