Sherry Chandler

Leatha Kendrick

Leatha Kendrick is not only an excellent poet but also one of the best writing teachers I have known, able almost it seems to internalize the student’s voice and put her finger on just the place that a piece goes wrong. I put this down to her great empathy and compassion, her joy.

Leatha was poetry editor of Wind magazine for several years. She has published two collections of poetry, Heart Cake (The Sow’s Ear Press, 2000) and Science in Your Own Back Yard (Larkspur, 2003). The latter is a gorgeous handset, handbound edition but the book is not more lovely than the poems. And she was co-editor, with George Ella Lyon, of Crossing Troublesome: 25 Years of the Appalachian Writers Workshop (Wind).

“Touching the Cat,” from Heart Cake, is one of my all-time favorite Leatha Kendrick poems:

Touching the Cat

Every morning, as her nose strokes my palm,
ears slide between my thumb and fingers,
her whole body rises rhythmically to fill
the cupped emptiness of my hand.
More than the plate of food
she talks out of me,
what she wants is

touch. Nights, while we sleep,
the prostitute’s head slides up
and down in just this way
in the front seat of nameless cars
parked along anonymous streets
of every city in the world. At the dead
end of pain and hunger lies this living
of the skin. She pushes against the violence
of each man’s need to feel

and be felt. Turned inside out
this craving for a boundary—
to feel our shape and, felt by hands
or mouths, to know
that we are real—
can thrust the knife through empty air
or send the bullet arcing out
to settle in the flesh.

On both sides of the touch
is fear of falling in, of losing
our edges. A husband’s hand
thrust hard between the thighs
makes his wife recoil, curl
into a question mark, self
tightly shut. Another night
the want flares up and we are gone,

fallen to the mindless deep
of flesh that hungers for
another, closer gathering in.
Our mouths like flowers blooming
into the other’s dark, we’re blotted out,
along with the limit of
our skin. An unlikely salvation,

a softening, each newborn taught me
with the whole length of her
body pressed against my belly,
mouth enclosing the nipple,
skin of cheek to curve of breast,
nothing to defend against the ecstasy
of being held all at once
all over.

Related posts:

Leatha Kendrick on WEKU-FM

Sins of the Flesh

Full Moon with Ground Mist

Vachel Lindsey

e. e. cummings

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