Jan Keough

Jan Keough in Dublin Born in Boston, MA, Jan (Carey) Keough now spends her time roving the Northeast corridor from Rhode Island to North Carolina and Florida with her husband, Kevin Keough. Important to them is their meditation practice. This mindset influences Jan's poetry and encourages her sense of humor! Life's only a dream, after all...

Visit her blog and enjoy her musings here: A Little Enthusiasm

Jan's poems have appeared at the Wickford Art Association's Ekphrasis exhibits 2015-2020 and in Curio Poetry, Naugatuck River Review, River Poets Journal, Spirit First Anthology 2010, New Verse News and The Providence Journal. Her poems have been read on Helen Burke's Leeds UK ELFM radio program.

The spoken essay, Mindfulness, is part of WRNI's This I Believe series. The Bay Area Poets Coalition awarded 1st Honorable Mention for Lemon Life - a bittersweet story of a man, his marriage, and lemonade. Her chapbook, A Little Encouragement, was runner-up in the Willett Press Chapbook Contest, Summer 2012.

2017 Jan published, "Permit Wonder" - a collectionof her poems - available on Amazon.

Jan Keough has been running the OPP since 2011. Send poetry submissions via Submittable: https://origamipoemsproject.submittable.com/ .

Along with poets Lynnie Gobeille and Barbara Schweitzer she co-founded the OPP back in 2009 - helping the world one free microchap at a time.

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Visit her Wordpress blogsite: jankeough.com View her video-poem on YouTube, 'I manage...' with music Nice Time by Kevin Keough via this I Manage LINK

► Jan's microchaps are available below. Click title to download the single-page PDFs.

Origami Microchaps	Selected Poems
I manage...
Click Title to download micro Cover design by JanK •	I manage to fit the day beside a mango tree, two shade elms, and a skiff lounging on the beach. I manage to remind myself to wind the stars and set them so they return at night. I manage to call out loud to be sure I am still awake and calm.	I manage to try on my life without tearing the seams that hold me together. I manage to place today atop the jars filled with long ago and maybe. I manage to remember everything about you once you smile . • Jan Keough © rev. 2016 .
Among friends
Click title to download PDF microchap A series of Unlikely Conversations - overheard - Cover: “Free wallpaper site” •	Yes, I. I always meet the nicest friends while waiting here. Let’s stand together more often. II. Meet me here tomorrow. Don’t forget. • Jan Keough © 2014	Unlikely conversations I. I’m a sheep and you’re a milking cow let’s pose together just this once. II. I know I’m a cow, but I’ve never seen you in this part of the field before.
Oxygen Therapy
Click title to download PDF microchap Cover: "Fractal Winds" from the web •	To Breathe Oh, my love, I love to breathe And when caught by that steady stream of unrequited thoughts I forget to breathe. I love to not breathe, that is To breathe or not to breathe is the question we never forget to forget • Jan Keough © 2013	My Hunger I hunger for a breath that will not conquer For time that moves in zephyr stillness between my thoughts I will the moment to cease, becoming while I inhale And hunger becomes an exchange for what will not be conquered
Tangential Toast
Click title to download PDF microchap Cover Photo by Jan Keough of her morning toast ♦	Traveling Toast Toast never mentions her travel plans, never sends a card. Her online pics reveal a taste for one-meal stands on fancy plates. She scrapes by on the whim of a morning stranger, an open counter, and a half-filled coffee mug. That golden glow of hers reflects either balmy zones or tanning salons set on high. But butter never did melt in her mouth. • Jan Keough © 2012	Toast Truths Toast is always in a jam falling face down, arguing with the jelly. She grows cold while you wait, salivate and berate the waiter for tepid temps and marmalade from an orchid lost & away in Seville.
A Little Ado About Everything
Click title to download PDF microchap Cover by Jan Keough with photo of her mother, Helen Renshaw, in Henniker, NH •	As Is I could have left it as is - That tall wanting for something else, Like an embrace or convergence Or a vessel with leftover sweetness. Instead, I chose to spill the contents Of my well-polished cup And let the memories seep out Far beyond my sweeping. Inside was an etching, pressed deep, That cracked the little-me bowl, Mingling my own tenderness With the far-flung universe of being. It was a crack that looked like The dusting of a spring dawn, Sharing its ken of hidden meadows Where burrows of common things hide. The cleft was barely legible, lightly seen - Not wishing to intrude on my sanctity. It shone with the eyes of many tapers, Their foreverness of life-hope burning on & on. And this glowing, leaning inward, Draped like patience, was waiting, Simply waiting there for me, For me to arrive, as is. • Jan Keough © 2011	a little encouragement a little encouragement particulates through you like a reason to live finding you at home it wanders those familiar rooms lost from view in this sanctuary of clear thoughts all others just slip away now you see a book still open to the very page that once comforted and all that is true arcs overhead wanting nothing but your company from a secret voice within the world encouragement skips like laughter waiting to be heard
Small Fonts
Click title to download PDF microchap Cover photo composite by Jan Keough •	One Hope One hope pulls at me: that you are reading this and for a moment we are friends. You scan words that just milliseconds ran from my mind, marched thru these fingertips, and walked right into your open, sacred eyes. So we are reading together and I am satisfied. • Jan Keough © 2009	IDEAS OF OTHERS I read the news to see what the ideas of others have done today. I have a snack after reading since I’m so hungry from these ideas. I take a walk to help me digest so many ideas. And on my walk I see a sky full of birds but no ideas. Since the birds have no ideas other than the sky.
A Little of This and That
Click title to download PDF microchap •	We Are Known Even as you read, Your thoughts are pressed For keeping. The looks you send to others Are caught in flight. Mislaid gaps, Well-placed glories Are swept into storage. All are yours. Words, feelings, The flickering touch Cascade around you. One seamless spinning Spent in faithful attendance, Full of obligation, Ready to serve Until your command releases. • Jan Keough © 2009	IT TAKES FORGIVENESS I see that it takes forgiveness To manage time, To answer the selfish mind pity. - Without self - I’m letting it all go free Slide downstream and Retrieve every word misspent, Wanting revenge. remember them all, - I’ll dis One prod, one pictureful piece At a time until Only the husk of past tense Lies empty and still. I believe that it takes forgiveness.
Pet Friendly Poetry
Click title to download PDF microchap Cover photo by Jan of kindly mini-schnauzer, Pixie •	Donna's Cockatoo She named him Barron for his crystalline crown feathers and royal demands. He owns a perch and every inch of living space they have. When Russell takes a shower Barron sings with him from the curtain rod. The spray reminds him of tropical rainfall which is just ancestral memory now. • Jan Keough © 2009	I LOVE (MY) DOGS Love is strange medicine. It cures chronic slip-ups, mortal insensitivity, a disappointing exam, or heartache poised in a glance. But my dogs know this, so they atone. For every no, they watch for yes. For a forgotten caress, they remind me with kisses For time stretched by carelessness, they jump and bark until the stars shake. A thousand minutes or one long, slow breath is too long to be away. They miss me like water for sky and other elements that house us in love.
Paper Dreams
Click title to download PDF microchap •	Green Enough I would like to be green enough to envy no one, to shy away from that noisy wanting for more. Spill me into a seaside dimension where only tidal pools (modest oceanic realms) remember my name And each shoreline, familiar with lunar patience, waits with the tides for my return. • Jan Keough © 2009	This Water Fountain This water fountain speaks so quick. Moments ago it had nothing to say. But the pump was off, water asleep in damp, tiered rooms, growing green with leaves and dead bugs who’d stayed too long. I wish I could understand this trill this unformed chit-chat melting between synapses making mind curl up in syntax seeping past sense. I listen to this storyteller for hours ear to drippings seeing drops become sound and sound become nothing more than presence.
A Room by Lynnie Gobeille & Jan Keough
Click title to download PDF microchap “A Room of One's Own is an extended essay by Virginia Woolf… based on a series of lectures delivered at two women's colleges October 1928. The title comes from Woolf's conception that, 'a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction'. – Wikipedia *	My Own Room I would like to think that a room of one’s own is something to be found like a jar or basket ready to be filled, but it is not. It is a quality hidden inside, stored, waiting - combed from choices to be untangled, and pulled away from distractions that own the mind. A room that is nothing but expansion, it’s beauty a reflection of hope. A safety, a welcoming, a presence that turns each key, each insight, into wave after wave of discovery. It is a splendor where time becomes lost like an echo. Discourtesy fades from disuse. Misunderstanding trolls shores not your own. • by Jan Keough © 2009	The Weight of Stones in Pocket (Remembering Virginia Woolf) Back lit by skies winter light oceans ebb and flow, gulls cry, circling us in flight. I watch the stranger on the beach as she bends picking up sea-glass with her hands. Dusting off the webs of salt and sand bringing the treasure to her lips as if to devour it. Working her fingers over the smooth surface, mesmerized by the glimmer of lavender dye. “A rare find,” she tells me when I inquire. “more rare than eclipse of sun and moon.” Beloved sea-flower in her outstretched hand, ‘Reason enough,” she states “to empty my pockets of their weight.” • by Lynnie Gobeille © 2009
The Intention
Click title to download PDF microchap Cover: ’Young Man Adoring the Sun’ Sanssouci Park, Postdam, Germany This poem was created from a reverie. I present it as it arrived at my doorstep. I hope you have such a visitor— your own Intention—waiting to be seen. •	The Intention It was always there – my Intention, lying beneath layers, reluctant to be seen. Layers I never wanted that covered the shyest hint of something wanting to be free. An Intention watching me while I gazed open-eyed at a calm afternoon’s trace outside my window, Looking past lawn and lavender, past the little step where the cat would hide, Past the siphon of cool air rising from tumbling shadows curried with indistinct worries. Worries that could never console or comfort or pour even the palest cup of tea.	I saw it tucked in my heart, protected from a loud, hurried voice asking for something more. One day I saw pain wearing my Intention into fading turning it inward, away, soon to be out of reach, like a point on the horizon a troubled painter paints. And then a panic to find it again. foolish me, foolish mind, foolish wanting. I had to tip my horizon, spill that point into my palm, rolling like mercury’s evanescence Until it stayed there – shy as a barely steaming spoonful, shining like loosened light. Making known (as you know yourself awake in bed each morning) that there is only one Intention, One rising that lifts you, breathes you into a vivid cosmos, A curving joy always present Unlayered Unwaiting, Understood. • Jan Keough © 2009
Snack on this Poetry
Click title to download PDF microchap Poems feed the soul - but give the palette a snack! •	The Truth of Flavors Flavors live in the mind and tongues give their opinions. The mouth waits for deliveries lined with brine or quinine, shined-up honey fine or scuffed in lemony sour. Each mouth guest begs for a chance to perform from a slow-soaking twirl across the lips to that spring-fed ballroom where the sweet/salty dancing begins sour pushes around the room while bitterness wanders and won’t leave until you’re left crying on the floor.	SNACKS There aren’t enough poems about snacks and the snacking of them. We meet to eat and feed friendships with spoons and spills. Truth can come frozen on a stick and melts willy-nilly on the tongue of every heartfelt conversation. Ice cream easily soothes the most downcast consumer and then you become the container. • Jan Keough © 2009
Forms Forming
•	Vermillion and lapis powdered fine. Kale soup scooped, alive in your bowl. Cardiff blue seascapes that mesmerize. Goose down caught on your flannel robe shakes free to flow. Shirt buttons and zipper pulls, the last carrot stick on the plate, grayed shapes and hazard-yellow lines graze along a rambled view Oh, the folly of orange blossoms and inkjet memory that fill each notebook. A beetle scarab beached on your wrist sits beside even-numbered tattoos. Now a macaw gets loose in the room; its singing singes the solitude.	The bright toffee cat agrees to notarize your day from a window seat vista - porch and gray railings billow with chimes and feeders, glinting and squinting. Then the magazine, glossy slivers, opens to tourmaline, tourmaline nested underground in silicate beds, asleep before harvest and the jeweler’s cut. As you sip the moment, a pre-dawn mosaic of coffee grounds skate the humble saucer of your cup, rimmed in gold. Images and forms forming, colors mixing, all in your head. • Jan Keough © 2009
Fat Crayons & Other Childhood Follies
•	Flute Lessons At grade school assembly I raise my hand to join the band. I bring home a shiny flute In a leather box lined with felt. I open the box and stare and stare. It’s too pretty to touch. My rented flute is returned After a month. Wasp Combat See wasp flying out of hole In backyard. Notice flight pattern. Timing is essential. Use teapot sieve To trap wasp. Stomp. Is it dead? Run like heck. • Jan Keough © 2010	Fat Crayons Before markers Came crayons, And in pre-school, It was the fat crayon. Five colors as wide as my thumb. Five to fit in my pants’ pocket When no one is looking. Five flying onto the ground While skipping home. I apologize to the teacher. My punishment: Stand in the wastebasket Facing the corner. Pet Hide & Seek Walking thru the woods With my dog and cat, I stop & hide behind a big tree While they sniff around. I start to count One—two—three… They found me already! I tell them, Don’t peek next time...
Learning
•	Brady Bunch Babies The girls pile on the common room couch waiting for The Brady Bunch every day at 5 pm before the cafeteria opens for dinner. Many wear their fuzzy slippers and take turns braiding hair. No one does homework but bring books anyway. They’re singing with the TV as you walk in the room. We know the song by heart, they scream. Their laughter is big and shows they know every note, every family truth the song says. The show begins and they stare hard, loving the big, grimy tube with it's vase of plastic flowers on top. At commercials they talk and talk, jumping each other’s words about Greg, Bobby, Marcia, Cindy - how they’re like a real family. They’re better than mine! one girls shouts at the ceiling tiles. I’m gonna have a big family – only boys! a promise bounces from the couch. I don’t want to have kids… says a girl on the floor. some seem to agree. • Jan Keough © 2010	the AA speaker comes to class she almost raises her hand. instead she stares until the speaker looks away – he doesn’t need syllables to translate her eyes. he thinks about what he just said - his story, his misery, his sobriety, his recovery, his family’s orbital decay. he asks the silent students for comments, questions? does she want to say something? I want to leave. - why? right now. - but why? I live this. I don’t need to hear about it anymore. he looks away. he knows she’s walking out the door.
Watching
Photo of the sweetest mini-schnauzer, Wendy •	Don't you love kindness? the caught-by-surprise smile as the door opens just as you reach to push it before your grocery bag of anticipation sogs apart on the floor. such is what spins electrons refills memories sets the table for our sometime time together. • Jan Keough © 2010	He wrote… about so many things but these two I will recall. I. That he felt himself drowning in the bodies of Japanese sailors and gasped II. that during a moment of ecstasy he saw the loosened cow strolling down - away lane - the far encompassing - all was his vision that day.