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Kerry Trautman
© Alexis Mitchell Photography
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the poet
Ohio born and raised, Kerry Trautman has served as a Northwest regional judge for Ohio’s Poetry Out Loud competition since 2016. In 2024, her one-act play Mass was a winner of The Toledo Repertoire Theater’s Toledo Voices competition. Her poetry collections include Things That Come in Boxes, Artifacts, To be Nonchalantly Alive, Unknowable Things and Irregulars.
the poems
To the NYC
Fire Escape
Mannequin
Whoever placed you there must not love
their own Mama, knowing how yours would have
a heart attack—you perched so high, hard ass teetering
on rusted iron railing. Your nude sisters
inside—posed bare to windows like bodega hoagies—
must envy your demure drape of arm across left breast,
your waist-cape granting some dignity, some hint at
flight, your sunlight unfiltered by high window glass
grimed with breath of streetsidedness, the purity
of your unmuffled noise. I hope they let you in
from rain, or when October chills through
to your metal armature, your smooth
scalp. I hope no pigeons nest in your wig
or if they do—because they probably will—
that they shit elsewhere,
that their fledglings alight off your shoulder,
soar down through the alleyway in the rose-gold
wash of post-drizzle June, that they flap harder
than they thought their sparse new
wings could, that your sisters envy them, too.
Commandments
For we walk by faith, not by sight.
~ 2 Corinthians, 5:7 ~
My eye doctor’s office blasts Christian rock
louder than I play music I like.
Today will be 90° like each this week and next,
sweat by 9am. On walls are crucifixes,
Ohio State football ephemerae, American Flags,
Bible verses scorched into wood planks.
It’s the only office that takes my insurance.
Louisiana voted requiring the ‘Ten Commandments’
be posted in classrooms. I dread my hot car when
I’m done here. The doc scopes my eyes, says
look straight ahead. New Orleans could be
underwater by 2050. The radio sings give me
your eyes. Air conditioning rumbles, ruffles
his white beard. He covers my eye, says
read the chart across the room. Hands me
a card, says read tiny print. Commandments
posters must be in a ‘large readable font’.
Did I crack my car windows? He opens
my eyelids with a thumb and finger. I have
no way to not see. Look up—ceiling panels
blocking godless sky. Look down—green
carpet, basement, earth with only today’s
inferno. The radio sings you are my vision.
The doctor says look straight at me. We see
so little the same. Singeing a pyrography
quote on a wood block takes a steady
hand, patience, the desire to burn to be
certain everyone sees what you believe.
Reservoir
This is drinking water, right? my son asks, watching
wave-lets swish the boulders’ seaweed tutus. Yes, I say,
not knowing how it works. Not knowing how much
of anything works. A mower cuts the high grassy incline
holding all this water in, its blade apparatus angled along
the steep slope, its cab with head-phoned driver inside
remaining plumb. So many machines and systems
engineered for real purpose. Then there’s me,
sitting on a rock trucked-in to create a fake lake’s berm.
I wouldn’t know how to fish here if we were starved.
Could I save us both if we fell in? I can only write about
cloud cover obscuring sun that aches to glint off water.
I can sit here and conjure worthless words while my son
wonders how long his phone might last if tossed in.
He answers his own questions better than I could. If
an earthquake split this miles-around wall that never
should have been here, how far into town would waters
keep swallowing? How much of this could we drink?
Sometimes what looks like a lake is just a construction,
not ancient at all. Sometimes a woman is incapable of
being anything more than a scratcher-down of words,
symbols, glyphs. It would be too easy to tumble off this cliff.
Publishing credits
All poems: exclusive first publication by iamb