Featured Poet: Kent Fielding

Good morning, and welcome to another Feature Thursday! I am thrilled to say the second feature to the site is Kent Fielding! Kent is an incredible poet with many talents, I first met him at Insomniacathon 2024 in Louisville Kentucky, and am blown away by all the work he does. I've read both his books and am in the process of rereading and writing reviews, which will be up in the coming days. I'm thrilled Kent agreed to share some work, check out five poems below as well as info on where to find his work.

Asleep in Ust-Ilimsk, Siberia

My girlfriend does not believe in kissing. She wants me to commit suicide

During the act of love. She believes death and sex should be connected.

Death is but the echo of sex, she says or is it the other way:

Sex is but the dream of death, and death eventually wakes up.

The resting heart beats: silence after thunder.

Silence after thunder is the mouth of the river.

As an old man, my bowl is filled with the bulbs of lightning bugs,

Thousands upon thousands. I spoon the beads into my mouth,

Chew the light, swallow the light, digest the light

Until all the light of the world is inside me

And everything goes dark.

Stealing Time

You must make the time to write –

Steal it from somewhere

From employers who believe they

Own the minutes of your life,

Silently say, “These are my moments”

and write. Write lines during day as you

Answer the phone, teach students,

Wait on tables, lay concrete –

Record it, write it. You own your seconds

No matter how much someone pays

You. Write during sleep – dream

Poetry and get up in the night

To protect the words. Write during

Chores, turn that grocery list

Into a poem: tomatoes, carrots

And the yolk of the moon

Scrambled into daylight.

Make your life yours again.

Stay away from people who want

To own you, or who need your attention,

Who need your gossip, your time,

Your energy, who want to sell

You something. Write a “I’m done with you”

Poem. Start it: “Dear so and so,

Look for worms in the earth. Smell the

Earth. I am of the earth. I am the earth.”

Callia

Conceived during an electrical storm,

cracks of energy ripped the dark canvas,

and you willed your way into your mother’s laughter,

floated in her ocean dream as your father taught,

his voice some faraway murmur:

Summer sounds of something above the waves.

They told him you had come to break his heart.

They told him you were his comet.

All afternoon in the tropical light

on those islands in the remote Pacific,

He worked his English magic, turned words

into water, turned water into wind,

and wind into the breath of trees:

The leafy palms that floated in his dreams.

As nights he turned in his sweated sheets,

as he worried about you, about what you

meant in his lost boyhood, his lost last calls

when the alcohol became too much and he

settled into a marriage with a woman

as a fierce as a flooded river, who followed

his endless wanderings, with endless love

with endless forgiveness for all the wrong

paths, the trails that took him into the brambles

that disappeared into snow, disappeared into ocean

foam, at the foot of icy mountains. Then you came

And he could no longer wander without

your weight in his arms, your squeal,

your laughter, your sleeping, your coos

to go that next block, to see the grass, the trees,

the dog again, to hear the crickets.

His happiness became the white moon of your voice.

DURING THE NIGHT

My students came and took my books—

greedy hands grabbed and grasped

at the shelves of my private library.

I heard their grumbles, “I want this one.”

“No, you got the last one.” “I need Hawthorne.”

“I want Dickinson and Donald Hall.”

“What’s The Idiot about?” “It’s about you Sam.”

And I understood whose voice belonged

to whose person. They were my students,

and it was my job to know.

And I wondered how much a voice is a person.

And how much a body is a person. What would

a person be without a voice or body?

Example: Bo Derek was all body. Moses, all voice.

But most teens do not have voices, said the principal.

In my sleep, I turned and swam,

my sheets great waves. I yelled for them to keep it down.

I could not find the shore of dreams.

I paddled and paddled, felt like drowning.

“Moses, Moses come here,” a student screamed.

Then there was a crash like a twin-engine plane

ramming into a mountain—sparks and flames.

In the morning, I made strong black

coffee to wash away the tides,

so, I could search the beach for skulls.

As I walked into the study I found

my shelves empty, not a book remained.

I felt like the greatest teacher alive.

The Goat Woman and Her Father

My father always tried to cover my head

Keep the horns hidden, the rumors quiet.

I never knew my mother. She died in birth.

My father became everything. I believed in him.

We traveled often, moved town to town,

State to state. He took various jobs: teacher,

Carpenter, clerk, bookseller, carny.

He once chopped wood for eight hours. Axe held

Tight over shoulder. He stepped into the swing

Blade fell fierce, quick, a guillotine,

Slapped wood logs apart, trunks once trees

Clunked to ground. Sweat filled the lined rigids

And wrinkled grooves cut deep into his face.

That night, over orange coals, he cooked stew:

Potatoes, carrots, onions, cabbage, beef—

Ingredients he could afford or find.

The stars salted our meal, and the crickets bowed

Us into digestive slumber—August sleep.

“Your mother was a beautiful oak,” he whispered

In a dream.

The next day I washed my head

In the cold water of the Ohio –

A young boy stared at me, stared at my horns.

“You’re a bull” he said, laughed and ran off.

My father yanked my arm: “Never remove

Your cap. Never uncover your head—

People will stare at your bone knobs and not

Understand. With passion they will hate you.”

Bio: Kent Fielding – educator, editor, poet, literary activist – currently lives in Southeast Alaska. He

co-founded White Fields Press and the literary renaissance with Ron Whitehead and recently

produced GonzoFest 2025 and Insomniacathon 2024. Fielding is an Honorary Kentucky Colonel,

a BP Teacher of Excellence, an Alaska Teacher of the Year Finalist, 2021 Alaska Speech and

Debate Coach of the Year. He has taught in the Marshall Islands, at Jefferson Community

College, University of Alaska Southeast, Mt. Edgecumbe, Skagway High School, and at summer

institutes in Turkey and Latvia.  Author of a two books of poetry, River Church (Radial Books

2025), and Chief Iffuccan (Wasteland Press 2002); a chapbook, The Revolution is About to

Begin; and a broadside “Museums” (Cheek Press 2023); his work has appeared in Prairie

Schooner, The Asheville Poetry Review, The Jefferson Review, Pavement Saw, Modern Haiku,

The Beat Scene, Frisk Magazine, Boog Literature, Night Owl Narrative: A Cajun Mutt Rag,

Keeping the Flame Alive, The Rye Whiskey Review, Bronze Bird Review, Fallen Anthologies

vol. 1 & 2, and Tidal Echoes, among others.

You can buy a copy of River Church here https://a.co/d/02XuwYKh Thank you Kent, for being a feature and sharing your incredible work!