Fiction   Essays   Poetry  The Ten On Baseball Chapbooks In Memory






Jim Kraus



Blue

In the museum, the suitor is kneeling,
palms turned upward,

fingers caressing the blank air,
like guitar strings

singing in the desert,
where there is only one tree,

and only one girl.
Nearby, blue ceramic tile,

fired repeatedly,
shines like gold.




Neither a Borrower Nor a Tooth Fairy Be

It's not always about money,
you know, puzzles of give and take,

borrowing and paying back,
sin and redemption.

Climb the tree of myths,
and take a bite of its fruit.

Take all that's allowable under the law.
Design your own payment systems,

subway tokens
turning in Icelandic vaults.

Into the cars goes the Tooth Fairy,
disappearing into the crowded past.




©2022 by Jim Kraus

Jim Kraus lives in Honolulu, where he teaches at Chaminade University. He is a swimmer and surfer and father of two daughters. His essay "Poetry and Anti-Nuclearism" was recently published in the volume Toxic Immanence: Decolonizing Nuclear Legacies and Futures (McGill-Queens University Press). His poetry has been published in numerous places, including Virginia Quarterly Review, Pequod, Unmuzzled Ox, Kentucky Poetry Review, Bamboo Ridge, Hawaii Review, Neologism Poetry Journal, Poetry Hawaii and elsewhere. He has recently been teaching a poetry class at Halawa Prison in Honolulu.


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