K.R. Morrison is a San Francisco based poet, drummer, and high school teacher who has been teaching English and Creative Writing for 18 years. Her first chapbook Cauldrons was recently published by Paper Press Books, within which “Her Altar” received a Pushcart nomination. Apart from reading at curations in New Orleans, Los Angeles, and New York, Morrison has featured throughout several Bay Area readings. Her work can be found in Switchback, Quiet Lightning, Haight Ashbury Literary Journal, Gasconade Review, Great Weather for Media, Spartan Press, the Lake County Bloom, and the Cooch Behar Anthology. Morrison featured on two popular Bay Area’s podcasts, Bitchtalk and Storied: San Francisco about being an educator, musician, and writer in a city that’s rapidly changing. Most recently, Morrison’s poetry was featured with NPR affiliate, “KALW’s New Arrivals” with Lisa Morehouse, the “Social Yet Distanced” podcast, the “Rooted in Poetry” podcast, and the Haight Ashbury Literary Journal’s poetry podcast. On Facebook: K.R. Morrison On Instagram: @krmorrisonpoet
Poems on Belonging
CHARLOTTE ANN
today I walk barefoot for you
I harbor homemade tortillas
in my heart I never
did taste, I bleed out
this world loaded with a .38
like mother—like daughter
I never know
what waterbeds or polluted men
need a lesson
from a drifting bullet
today I tell your stories
who knows what’s true
from the fiction your scars harbor
for a fallen woman’s final justice
the poet in me thinks that just like you
make-believe and memory
can make a homemade meal in 20 minutes
to feed double shift mothers
to nourish street sons, bruised daughters
your ever evicted stove
of legacies dancing
in lard laden frying pans
today I walk barefoot
and the souls of my feet bleed
so I walk stronger, I smile
remembering a little girl you enlisted
to rub your pirate black feet
I walk barefoot on the bones of your words—
you’re good, Babygirl. But your sister,
she has those softball hands.
She can rub some feet.
so I worked harder
on your soles harboring whiskied men, fists
and marbled in the madness, so much
broken glass mixed with moonstone
so much soul and sadness
Funny what a mother can do.
She can return to smiles
set the tone, salvage
love inside knee scabs
while she loses raising you
HER BURDEN
In one week, a woman
can grow life
shoot a rapist bleed out
the last word
while he leaks red hell
on car fenders she waxes
when she isn't waning
In one week, a woman
can talk tears off suicidal bridges
while she bridges
words to new days
dressed in smiles preparing
breakfast mixed with messages
self discovery over easy
pancakes that make pain too, pass
In one week, a woman can become
an armed robber or she can
nurse bottles and beers
(and in the same week)
bring freedom to kids she never raised
but carries
While vacuuming others’ mess, a woman
can write a poem
on hallways she architects
inside her head
that always she revises
surveillances
She can burn
down the world
with flammable honesty
then discover fire
extinguishers
while men
cough, choke, drop
for cover
Copyright © 2022 by K.R. Morrison. Used with permission of the author.
Speak Poetry in San Mateo County 