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Kara Provost

Kara Provost is a poet, runner, mother, and college professor. 

Her latest book, Topless, is a collaboration with two other poets and was published by Main Street Rag in 2011.   Her chapbook Nests was published in 2006 by Finishing Line Press.   She has poetry and memoir published in Connecticut Review, Hurricane Alice, The Newport Review, Tar Wolf Review, The Aurorean, and other journals, as well as in an anthology edited by David Starkey and Wendy Bishop, In Praise of Pedagogy: Poetry, Flash Fiction, and Essays on Composing.

Kara teaches writing and directs the First Year Honors Program at Curry College (Milton, MA) in addition to conducting creative writing workshops. Although she grew up in Florida, she has grudgingly learned to tolerate winter and now lives near Providence, RI with her husband and two daughters.  She can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..


Kara's Origami micro-chapbooks & selected poems are available below.

 

Origami Micro-chapbook

Selected Poem(s)

Blame it on Billy

 
Cover Photo of Kara

{mooblock=Writing}

I am mad with words, sick
as Blake’s rose
tunneled through by poems
like worms, each word eating
another red petal.

What kind of mother
feeds her children poems
instead of bread?
What kind of wife
wishes her husband out the door
so she can rush back to her black ink,
mark the white paper?
What family wants a poet
among them, scratching secrets
until they bleed?

I am obsessed as coyote
with full moon,
running, nose to trail,
poem’s tail swishing into a bush
just out of sight.
I catch its scent on night wind,
howl.
Kara Provost © 2013

{/mooblock}

Opening

 

Kathleen Speranza Painting,
"Nest with Twigs“

{mooblock=Praise Song}

     (with recognition of W. S. Merwin)
 
You invisible one
music of all the songs sung
beat of wind, wing, breath
you, purpling the violets
after winter’s death
 
swaying the lace curtain
warming my skin with yellow
lifting the scent of jasmine
carrying voices through hollows
 
plunging kill spiral of hawk
cooling green-shadowed woods
singing spring water over rock
grounding April with deep mud
 
you, shining on the flashing silver fishes
headying the air with orange perfume
feeding shoots reaching up through rot
causing all the world to be still or move:
 
you invisible one
music of all songs sung.
Kara Provost © 2011

{/mooblock}

Baby's Point Of View

 

{mooblock=Youngest Daughter Series}

My sleepy girl tucks
her head beneath my arm, butts:
kid seeking comfort.

Tucked in mine, swinging:
young elephant’s tender trunk,
my daughter’s small hand.

Wind twirls fall oak leaf
sun-gilded—a gold fairy!—
she tugs me to see.
Kara Provost © 2011

{/mooblock}

Acknowledgements: “Baby’s Point of View” & “Picking Up” first appeared
in Nests, Finishing Line Press: 2006.

What They Say

 

{mooblock=My Dear Ring}

Yes, yes, I love you—
were we not made
for each other?
Do I not wear you
day and night, wet and dry,
only remove you when dough
or dirt threaten your beauty?
And then how naked
I feel, and a slim whiteness
circles where your gold should go—
I am so marked by you.
I confess once or twice
in twenty years I have taken you off
just to see if the world feels different
unchartered, unclaimed,
but I missed you, my dear
and in truth want no other.
Rest easy—I’ll not put you asunder.
Kara Provost © 2011

{/mooblock}

Everyday Eros

 
Cover photo: Kathleen Speranza

{mooblock=everyday eros}

The feel of the shaft in hand
                polished as blue stone
smooth as lake water surface
                on summer waveless days
rhythm rubs between hot palms
                into the curved bowl
open, waiting with longing.

A car rumbles to a stop
               crickets sing their strings—
will she be discovered wrapped
               in night’s velvet breath
mashing garlic in the dark
               with mortar and pestle,
hungry for their bodies’ music?
Kara Provost © 2011

{/mooblock}

Figures of Speech

 

 

{mooblock=Figure of Speech}

“What a lovely figure of speech you have,” the oxy-
          moron commented to the epithet, who shot
          daggers at him from atop stiletto heels, until,
          leaking metaphors, he fled to conjunction junc-
          tion and hopped the “A” train, not realizing it
          was only an article, not a predicate, so couldn’t
          take him anywhere. As he sat drumming his
          fingers waiting for the train to move, he sighed
          a hyperbole like a giant cartoon speech bubble,
          then grabbed hold of the tail and floated away
          from all his misery and shame into a setting
          cliché.
Kara Provost © 2009

{/mooblock}