Kierstin Bridger

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Kierstin Bridger

Kierstin Bridger is a Colorado writer who divides her time between Ridgway and Telluride. She is author of two books: Women Writing the West's 2017 WILLA Award-winning Demimonde (Lithic Press) and All Ember (Urban Farmhouse Press). She is a winner of the Mark Fischer Poetry Prize, the 2015 ACC Writer’s Studio award, a silver Charter Oak Best Historical Award. Bridger was short-listed for the Manchester Poetry Competition in the UK. She is editor of Ridgway Alley Poems and Co-Director of Open Bard Poetry Series. She earned her MFA at Pacific University.

Poems

Mining Town

Lightning breaks open the heart of the wood
every manner of seed takes root
whether by swallow or scavenge,
by hawk or by hoard.

This is what it feels like to be haunted
by the carved bars, vaults, and walls of this town.

In the attic, over our heads, a heaving chest
breathes-in fine dust like powder.

It’s almost imperceptible this slow drag,
curling photographs of the sporting life,

tokens unspent, brittle lace gone to moth
fodder and waste. A town bought on backs.

Museum portraits catch my eye as I walk,
their milky violet bottles, child-sized shoes,

and in the alleys, colt shells unearth
under most any cloud-kick of dirt.

Stepping out into the wild, the river talks too.
They were too young to be forgotten,

pine-hearted sirens, rustler husbands
banking on their brides, runaway maids

farming their babies to the retired, “one night wives,”
women hobbled by the work, olden and hidden.

so many mine smudged doves—
broken-winged birds waylaid by the boom.

Alley Flowers

Gunshot holes through hollyhock leaves
broke my reverie,
broke it long enough to remember
the moon is not my mother
and my husband is never coming back—
the mine swallowed him whole, grubstake and all.

His pickaxe is not beneath the floorboards
though I sometimes pretend that it is,
imagine I can wield it when sour breath
and stubble-scrape turn to blades.

One year all the men loved us,
fought to escort any woman under thirty—
negotiable virtue or not,
but we are now marked not the marrying kind.

I remember the lupine flags of early summer,
the night before I entered this vulgar house,
the sweet dandelion greens I had for supper,
the hot, salty bacon wilting them thin and dark.

I think of the hand-fed fawn at camp
when I pamper this stray amber-eyed tabby,
a gift I found under bullet-pocked leaves.
The gunpowder’s scorched scent takes me back.

Preparing to Sink

Black eyed peas in the bowl—
hard as sea stones in rinse water
tender by tonight, toothsome.

White beads bit by black.

This is the way back to my body—
all my hunger tempered by claw
and churn. I dip my hand in

over and over.

The slip of water,
the plunge and sift,
a quiet tide of sustenance

against the yellow enamel.

So much waiting
until I remember the chores
of all the women who came before me:

kinfolk who bathed the dead.

It takes patience to come to this
reckoning. Though we may pay
a mortician to prepare the wrecked limbs

of my brother, my gape-mouthed brother—

inject chemicals he did not
barter or buy, flood his dark cavities
once pink with life,

we will only wring our hands

in prescribed grief
and glimpse quick
his purple flesh in some oak box.

I must remember he is beloved.

I must remember standing in the kitchen
when he was still slighter than me,
our fingers puckered and waterlogged,

drenched in the debris of our last dinner,

plates clink under a steam-blurred moon.
Two chattering fools trying to get through—
tasked with the same job

elbow to elbow, hip to hip,

dipping bottle brush and holey cloth,
scrubbing away what remains--
not all we've taken in

but all we have refused.

Blinded Soldier and His Molly
Briar Cliff Manor, New York 1919

I wasn’t used to learning, didn’t want to grow.
I was making strange companions with the dark
when I heard a familiar accent, the Missouri voice
of my youth. She began to read me Twain’s stories,
tales of Tom Sawyer and Becky, lessons of a white
washed fence, and cranky aunt Polly.
With every word
she began repotting my curiosity.

She’d bring me crisp apples she’d plucked
from the orchard and slice them thick, tell me
about the carving blade her pappy once had. I waited
for her clean scent, the faint trail of rosewater perfume.

Mrs. J. J. Brown was absent during the morning shift
when I’d be shaved and have my dressings changed.
At her urging I began learning the Braille dots, pressing
sore fingers across the page. I yearned to read it back
to her but I stammered like a schoolboy, slow and stupid.

She once stopped by my bedside
to tell me about her longest night, the cold black ocean,
frozen fingers gripped to the churn of the oar—
Not knowing her Carpathian was waiting
with the arrival of dawn light
she moved her limbs like an automaton
afraid if her motion wasn’t constant she’d freeze.
She told me she was unsinkable still, that I too
would have to rewrite my story—
never mind the drowning
I’d felt each day
when midnight lingered
behind my morning eyes.

Red Cross

Stewed tea soaked in cloth
pressed to lips and slowly sucked
I pass the hours perched on my ribs,
stretched out in the warmth of hospital.

My backside raw, I’m propped slant
wrapped in white and urged to rest.
I dream for the first time in weeks--

something about crimson stitches

my sister lit by morning rise, snow…

sewing by the window

the dogwood

bright against the drifts.

Oh what a lovely wound my Sergeant says
pointing to me, says I’ll be headed home, certainly.
Two days before the trench went black I saw my mate
lay his trigger finger under the rust specked blade of his bayonet.

I watched him take full breath, smash the rock down,
the arc of ripe gore in focal point. Passed out on the sludge-
mucked duck boards he’d bought his ticket out. “A fine wound,
he booms again “and a Great war indeed,” I counter.

I watch for the nurse with auburn curls.
She doesn’t know I caught glimpse: her delicate scar,
a burn of intersecting lines she tries to hide
with dark stockings or black dust of coal powder.

My sister stoned a man who’d tried to catch her

compromise her,

mark her with his bloody seed.

Said she’d asked for it, miserable suffragette.

Lost an eye he did.
She works a hospital now too,
wears an emblem, took an oath.
Saves lives men like me only wasted.

“Red Cross” was a Silver Award winner from The Charter Oak Best Historical 2017 from Alternating Current Press

With Feathers
After Emily

There at the window, if the light is right,
I can see the dusty silhouette of wingspan on glass.

So many birds believed this was not sky’s end— this place where
I peer out floor-to-ceiling pane, turn Charlie Parker over again.

When we built this house, I dreamed of oversized accordion doors
so I could make the living room half sky, half beam and post.

But here it can snow on the 4th of July. Under soft plaid wool, we sip cocoa
through hummingbird straws, watch the night blast in dahlias of fire.

We also know how to clear away the dead in a dustbin, know flight
doesn’t always land in safety, that kept nests in the eaves

and atop porch lights are harbingers of luck, signs of respect. Myths
are made under covers, salty as worked skin, never told the same way twice.

My husband, who red-lined the budget on the folding doors, who instead
ordered the largest glass in the warehouse, is up in the clouds now--

circling low, calling me to come outside and wave. “I’ll tip my wing,” he says.
I bound out the back door, hair in a towel, no pants, arms like blades

carving a snow angel in the air. This life, this unfettered longing,
so much sweeter than hope. It’s a wonder we can stop looking up and out at all.

Nominated for the Pushcart Prize 2017
Winner of The Progenitor Art & Literary Journal at Arapahoe Community College

Of Arc

Stepping across the threshold
I take a long, smoky pull
from the August dark,
try to memorize dirt and water
all that holds me on this blue orb
every boy I met at midnight
every car I pushed down the road
revved like thunder
leaned into bend and turn
to escape the rearview
bridges snapping
rope and board
peripheral flickers of constellation
bigger than the small grip of control
it took to shut out the lights
lock the door,
secure the privacy settings.
In this brittle haze of nostalgia
I remember another mad man is in charge
but this time I have a child asleep
while I secret this drag.
Listen,
my curated walls are enflamed
my zip code could be nuked
just like that it could be gone.
I have to take off my specs--what you do before a fight--
My opponent will blur
the way they did for Artemisia
and for Joan.
This is how to stand like a knight
only a slim blade against the dragon
of this time:
Hold my light
I'll whisper into the legacy of stars
to the wind and crescent moon
handover my glowing ash and lick of flame.
Every uprising takes a curve of trajectory
and a practice run.
Every revolution starts with one woman
turning inward, holding court with herself.

Winner of the 9th Fortnight Poetry Prize from Eye Wear Publishing UK.

You Occupy the Field

You with the marked mustache
A tiny forward slash scar

you with your camera stare like
an aspen eye

you with your contrarian countenance
squarely set in high gloss portrait

a Bakken plainsman profile
captured grit in megapixel rudd

unlike the old west miners,
gaunt with damp and dark un-grinned

for the turn of the century smoke lens
you the root of all western destiny,

manifest in hazel glare
rough neck, stubble muzzle,

chemical dust, oil soaked brim
Oppugn the plight of the jobless?

Not you sir. You follow the work,
angle the consequence later, smug in the now.

Appeared first in Occupoetry Poets for Economic Justice

Boundary Breach

Pick up the button hole
or eye of the needle
with hard squint
see inside
salute the high sun
see us lucid but listing
hands open

I can conjure us
like that dip of oar
the silvered pond
interruption of glass
the canoe—our reflection in mad
Van Gogh dashes—
un-mired by melt
we sit quietly in memory
waiting for an August noon
of yarrow perfume,
sweet sting of thistle
leading us there

Meanwhile the dirge of March
a snow show pace melting ice,
metal rasping the edges
anxious grass and granitic snow
fish writhing back to life
below the frozen surface
translucent; thin enough
to crack
with a spoon
a thimble
with a tap
without you

Solace in a half muddy marsh
this hard, narrow focus
as close
as I’ll ever be
to having you back