Home by Karen Mary Berr

Strange word – Home,
hardly a warmth,
a belief, clear as a tear,
that someone wanted you here
when no one was really called.
A harness playing Humanness
in your most recurrent dream.
The one made of broken plates
and vows, repeating
what the splinters sighed,
calling you ‘child’
unceasingly.
The one in which you bury
the cat with flaccid birds,
get drunk on milk,
pretend that love, like ivy,
cannot stop itself.
That bone-white cage
you escaped a thousand times,
for lovers who knew not your name,
but your clandestine lust
for deviant hearts.
That dream dissolving
just before you wake up,
eyes and lips swollen-red,
halfway between promised lands
and empty skies.
Leaving beneath your ribs,
between your legs,
solely the pulse of exile.
No matter where the wars bloomed,
indoors, outdoors,
there never was any escape,
any safe return.
No prodigal orchard,
no forgiving city,
only the memory of a man
with whom you’d have gladly died,
and that you untied
– or was it the contrary?

Karen Mary Berr was born in France, where she studied Applied Arts and Art History. She lived in Bosnia, Lebanon and Canada, before returning to France in 2004. Short films based on her poetry have been featured on Moving Poems,Hypocrite Design Magazine and File Electronic Language International Festival (Highlike). Her poems have been published in Lost Coast, El Aleph Press, Deep Water Journal, Construction, and other reviews.