Philly Poetry Chapbook Review is pleased to present four original poems by Sarah E N Kohrs as our second of six biweekly featured poets of the Spring 2025 issue.
Poems
In a World Designed
I’ve run the #s so many times;
folded, unfolded, refolded
gloss-less paper scraps until
creasing settles even
on my heart. Murmured
in black and white repose
everyone keeps supposing
in place of who I really am.
Pinpointed by stucco. Arc-
lit in a night that mists. I
still remember my grandfather
rolling his own cigarettes. The
paper thin enough to be sacred,
without all the words. Star-
shimmer controlled by his very
breath. It made me believe
I could hold onto anything
in a world designed for women
to lose everything. Even what
we claim with Ariadne’s thread.
Folded, unfolded, refolded
until the real me uncreases.
Pearl-Sheened Trust
You said you saw
but didn’t seem to mind
when you really
didn’t see, but wish you
had. I always forget
whom I can trust in a world
that swallows itself
again and again. Vernixed
at birth, nails already
long enough to scar,
we have nothing
but our cries to greet
each pearl-sheened
becoming. Were we caught
by gentle hands or
held ready for dipping
into the Styx?
You said you saw
but didn’t seem to mind
when you really didn’t see
but wish you had
in a world we cannot trust
and which doesn’t
trust us anymore, either.
The aurora borealis woke me today,
when all the world
was still black satin.
A muted splay of light
lingered—the reverse
shadow under a door.
Illumined stardust, perhaps.
My sight, a spritz
of γ Cru red giants
longing for supernova
beyond the Eagle-hawk.
Is that what it means?
To be a woman?
A body AI’d to give.
Never enough,
yet always enough
when the need is greatest.
Not even bars can
keep out the evening,
when not being seen means
not being real. Means
being okay for feeding
the greed of human
needing. I don’t want
to be cradled
or adored, lavishly
collected, prodded
like HeLa. But,
whether here
or there, I deserve
the dignity to be
a heart beating freely.
What We Create Together
Is it wise to enshrine what leaks
like a faucet, slowly eroding
pus-less pocks that mar what isn’t
lunar? Wind chimes remind me
there’s a reason to keep breathing.
Hoping. Seeing you as me, me as
you in a world that divides and
divides until everything we care
about is in the dividing. Instead
I want to look at the stars, settled in
their lightyears away, differently,
together creating a shared story
for us to whisper when children
whimper, cloaked by an unknowing
that haunts our world like the cacophony
of myriad instruments warming up.
Is it wise to enshrine such wild singularities?
Or the melodies that we create together?
About “What We Create Together”
The National Radio-Astronomy Observatory in WV has a display that shows the constellation, Orion, as well as a divergent view of where in space the individual stars that make up Orion are really located. Instead of a 2d image, there is a 3d expansion of stars across time that creates a familiar constellation. People are like those stars: so much diversity and yet we have a shared story on a specific planet in the Milky Way that depends on us for survival as much as we depend on Earth.
In America, cancel culture is a hot topic. What we don’t realize is that Americans have been canceling out since before we were even a country: forcing others into a box we unempathetically defined. Americans raise up shrines or tear down ways of being to make an ideological point, not to bring all Americans together in harmony or to ensure individual, constitutional rights and basic dignity for everyone in our country.
What if we started creating together? What if we looked at who we are from the side and saw a much more complete and honest perspective? “Seeing you as me, me as you in a world that divides and divides…”
Author Bio
Sarah E N Kohrs writes to grapple with human injustices, as much as to savor fireflies. She has 75+ poems in journals worldwide, including Arboreal, Culinary Origami, Elevation Review, Flyway, Kitchen Quarterly, Louisiana Literature, Lucky Jefferson, Poetry Society of Virginia anthologies, West Trade Review. She’s received numerous honors, including the Peter K. Hixson Award in poetry. Her chapbook, Chameleon Sky, won the 2022 Kingdoms in the Wild Poetry Award. Surrounded by Shenandoah Valley, Va, mountains on land that belonged to the Manahoac, SENK is also a photographer, potter, and educator. She has a BA from The College of Wooster, Oh.
Contents
Book Excerpt: The Prize of Québec by Jennifer Nelson
“I tend to lean into the transconstitutory powers of ekphrasis. … Only in poetry can one go to the moon in a way that critiques the quest for the moon.” Read a poem from Jennifer Nelson’s new collection from Fence Books, On the Way to the Paintings of Forest Robberies.
Chapbook Poem: This Is How They Teach Us How to Want It . . . by Shanta Lee
“This poem explores the levels of our participation in handing ourselves over, often to the people, places, or things that deserve no such delight.” Read a #poem from Shanta Lee’s new book from Harbor Editions, This Is How They Teach Us How to Want It . . . The Slaughter.
Three Poems by Jonathan Fletcher
“Instead of having to choose between religion or the LGBTQ community (which I know many member of the latter feel they have to do), I think it is possible (and maybe even biblical) to integrate both into one’s life.” Read three original poems from Jonathan Fletcher, along with words from the author.
What Happened? On You are Leaving the American Sector by Rebecca Foust
“Rebecca Foust’s new chapbook of poems has a strange prescience. … Foust isn’t alone in making the obvious connection between Trump’s first term and Orwell’s dystopia.” Read the full chapbook review by new contributor Rick Mullin.
‘What if we started creating together? What if we looked at who we are from the side and saw a much more complete and honest perspective?” Read four poems by poet Sarah E N Kohrs, along with words from the poet.