When she isn’t teaching the abundant virtues of the comma, writing about big hair and Elvis, and doing the Cha Cha, Kim Baker works to end violence against women. She performs in the annual Until the Violence Stops Festival Providence.
Kim's poems have been published online and in print. Her most recent reasons to cha cha cha include an honorable mention in the Poetry Society of New Hampshire National Poetry Contest, This I Believe essay broadcast on NPR of Rhode Island, and first play stage-reading at the Culture*Park Play Marathon in New Bedford MA.
2014 Update: Wednesday evening, April 23, 2014, Kim will read at the Bryant University Poetry Month celebration being held Bello Hall from 6:00-7:00pm. She will be joined by OPP Poets, David Dragone, Eileen McCluskey, Ira Schaeffer and Lauri Burke. Come join us.
(Photo by Seth Jacobson)
► Kim's Origami micro-chapbooks and selected poems are below.
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Origami Micro-chapbook |
Selected Poem(s) |
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{mooblock=Dream of a Red Boat on a Winter Day}
It rests its hull on sea grass ecru,
a cardinal listing in crisps of crimson on a beachfront wearing icy blue.
Majestic in its leaning, but lonesome,
keeling starboard as it waits for spring to raise it up on southwest, fulsome
breezes billowing sails that sing
a rainbow of fantastic travel I dream this schooner once unraveled
the ancient legend of Saint Luke
that Satan tempted Jesus at Ravello with breathtaking Mediterranean views.
Then, that enchanted rig embraced
an unassailable journey to these muted hues, uplifting me from my winter place,
a cinnabar savior with a conveyance grace.
to worlds beyond this dismal sting.
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Kim M. Baker © 2009
{/mooblock} |
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{mooblock=Love at First Sight}
Inspired by 'Lights on the Water,'
a fabric art painting by Kerstin Zettmar
The riverwalk is pixilated
with people in waterfire reverie. Yet in that madcap jostling along the path to the fireworks, our eyes meet, for just a moment. Then, whoosh! We are swept along in the sway and crush, rushed to opposites sides of the bridge. All through the night, I think I see you, there, near the vendor with his lemony ice, no, there with the blue cotton candy man, wait! there in the mauve of love splayed insane across the water like petals, exploding in fireworks of “find him!”
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Kim M. Baker © 2009
{/mooblock} |
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{mooblock=Iamb No More}
It was love at first poem.
You batted your sonnets at me. I flirted my internal rhyme. We exchanged the syntax of our stories, narrating them with alliteration, onomatopoeia, and conceit.
It was clear you were well versed.
I idyllized you and longed to be a couplet. But then, you suggested a caesura, blamed my assonance, my fib, my free verse, sending me into eternal elegy. I dragged my feet for lines, consonanced, totally enjambed. I showered you with limericks, ballads, and
odes.
Then, heard through the grapevine
you’d taken the last Quatrain to Clarkesville. What was a broken-hearted blank verse to do? I haikued it out of town myself. And while getting tankaed at the local pub, I could hardly refrain myself as I watched you trope over, wrap your figure around me, and apostrophe my hyperbole. And, as we lay together in personified bliss, I tried to imitate your accent and stuck my foot into my mouth,
again.
• Kim M. Baker © 2009 {/mooblock} |
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{mooblock=Opening Lines}
If I could be baptized again,
I would first be immersed in fiery verse, in poetic language of rebirth, then doused with the ineffable affection of God and my parents dripping affirmations of the glory of my one uniquely extraordinary self.
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Kim M. Baker © 2009
{/mooblock} |
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{mooblock=The Art of Poetry}
I reach for the volume
thin as forgiveness, sniff its cover, grab at the stanzas, lick the lean words. I am hungry for comfort.
But there is no salve here
in simply reading. I must run my fingers along the white marble of verse, study the music the molded lyre makes, melt into the Italian swirl.
Then, when I can see the apple
Venus held or the battle plans of David or the bodhi of Buddha, I know I am ready. I know I must take a cool block of language and mold it into the shape of beauty and grace
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Kim M. Baker © 2009
{/mooblock} |
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{mooblock=Evening Prayer}
By the fire we sit,
two old church ladies, quiet inside the sanctuary of home worshipping next to the exhale of genteel geraniums, faces pressed delicately against the window counting the days until spring.
With knowing nods, we lift up the flames
licking the sides of two logs stacked like hands praying, each of us secretly offering the sacrifice of ash and tongue for just one more glorious evening, silent, by the fire.
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Kim M. Baker © 2009
{/mooblock} |
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{mooblock=Opening Lines}
Banish the bent-over spirits,
the raging regrets, acoustics mute to all but me, voices like paranoia, cluttering my brain, bending my spine.
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Kim M. Baker © 2009
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{mooblock=Mother Nature}
A hawk stalks
a stonewall. Dinner is stacked up there. Chipmunks and snakes. A mouse plays dead but is only stoned between a rock and a moss place. This quarry covers for its guests facing predators. Face it: Nature is a Mother.
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Kim M. Baker © 2009
{/mooblock}
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{mooblock=1.}
I cannot love everyone.
I cannot let the tsunami of each grief tidal my tenuous time in what you call paradise. Christ! There are rivers of blood. Did you really mean to create aneurysms and cancer and the useless premise that you don’t give me more than I can handle?
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Kim M. Baker © 2009
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