Karen Pierce Gonzalez

Karen Pierce Gonzalez's works include True North (Origami Poems Project 2022), Coyote in the Basket of My Ribs (Kelsay Books 2023), and Down River with Li Po (Black Cat Poetry Press 2024). Her writing and assemblage art have appeared in numerous publications. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.

* 2023 Update: Karen's poem Icarus (in microchap 'Sightings from a Star Wheel') was nominated by the Origami Poems Project for the annual Pushcart Prize.

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► Karen's microchaps are available below. Download the single-page PDF by clicking the title & saving to your pc. Set your printer for 'landscape' printing. Folding instructions are under the Who We Are menu tab.

Origami Microchap
	Sightings from a Star Wheel
	Click title to download microchap • Cover image: ‘Pixabay’	Lightning quick Under amber autumn moonlight, I spread a fresh mound of bark across the bush-stubbled yard. Shreds of redwood tucked into place, I smooth out rough spots then look up to see Gemma rising early in the Corona Borealis. She watches me pat down loose elder remains. Her luminous tiara tilted, the northern jewel nods. Sapphire-white approval travels seventy-five light years to reach me. Her applause— crackling thunder.	Icarus Unlike you, foolishly feathered with wax too close to the sun, I have learned from failing to soar beyond nebulas, bathe in Neptune’s cool waters thread strands of distant light into my skin; tattoos hold me - at bay, yellow-blue gases whistle. • Karen Pierce Gonzalez © 2023
	True North
	Click title to download microchap Cover image courtesy of Pixabay.com •	I hang upside down on the branch of a Maple tree whose leaves have just begun to open, and read the brailed ridges of midribs, netted veins, toothed edges; botanical roadmaps I cannot travel when upright spongy spring lichen on my fingertips turns sunlight and thin air into stories; rootless survival on stipules, sticky treks across bark, the first living thing to grow after a landslide, a fire, a flood fronds imprint themselves on my palms; tentacle trails, guided by seasons, change color—damp yellow, dry green, chilled ochre, icy umber— shift the needle in a compass towards true north – always just ahead Dawn winds blow my bamboo raft down the Napa River. I awake to the sound of a crimson rainbow trout, on its run to spawn, slapping a small boulder. When at last it rises above the rock, its tail spins in all directions. Scales drip as it swims mid-air. There, fins develop rich plumage; a red-shouldered hawk soars, skims the water’s surface, then dives in. In its wake my buoyant craft bobs. How To Find Me Dream of being a space cadet. Hear the drip, drip, drip of moon floe entering the atmosphere. Let it fill you with shallow lakes. Dive in. Make a splash. Breaststroke across currents of isolation, avoid the undertow of solitude. You won’t sink if you keep swimming. Defy the odds. Launch yourself. Meet me on the other shore.	Taken You have become the moon’s mini-me, too tiny to pull ocean waves or cast pixeled light from your rambling loop. Shanghaied by the satellite’s gravity, you labor off course in dense shadows. Cannot wax or wane freely until or unless another thief— maybe me in a burst of meteor showers— steals you back. Hoshen Behind my breastplate ladened with priestly lapis and rubies, silver-gold leaf unfurling from my chest. my hope—finding the beloved finding me— peers out through the latticed bone lining. This desire ripens in semi-darkness, but does not bruise when meeting the spongy walls of my lungs. There, breathing in is just as easy as breathing out. One accordions the other, a billowing duet of silence and sound. • Karen Pierce Gonzalez © 2022

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