Featured Poet: Peter Kaczmarczyk
Good afternoon and welcome to another Feature Thursday, today is Peter Kaczmarczyk! I first met Peter at poetry in the park in Columbus IN, in 2024 where he asked me to read his first chapbook. I became a fan from the very first poem and have since read everything he's released, personally reviewed all three chapbooks and am working on one for his full length. I cannot recommend his work enough, he has been one of my top favorite poets since 2024. Check out his poems below, with a link at the end on where to buy his books!
Fitted Sheets
Trying to love me
Is like trying to fold a fitted sheet
Trying to get a pill down the throat
Of the feral cat that hasn’t yet learned
How to love you back
Trying to love me
Is like trying to catch the ember
That the wind keeps pulling higher into the sky
Trying to hold the dream, so vivid in the night
Now blotted out in the light of day
Trying to love me
Is like submitting to the lash
Where pain and pleasure blend together
But leave behind only scars
Shed
I dropped a tab of acid as I exited Indiana
Stopped to paint the car somewhere in rural Ohio
Leaving red stains on the parking lot of Aldi
I turned North as the sun began to set
Stood in the moonlight to shave my head
Buzz of the razor echoing out across Lake Erie
At dawn I drank stale coffee as I cut my nails
Made a wish and tossed them in the Finger Lakes
Another tab of acid and I shed my skin
Wanting to feel home again in Massachusetts
I drove until the ocean let me go no further
Slept along the beach where I made love
To the spirit of a dream of a past that never happened
Dawn came and I drove again
Let memory guide me to the door of a cat
Who lived alone with an old friend
The cat curled about me as he knew my smell
She stared surprised as the sun rose and recognition dawned
Then she smiled and took my hand
Said she understood and welcomed me in
Umbrella
I will share my umbrella
It doesn’t mean I will be your lover
I will reach out to you in the dark of night
Help to calm your fright
I will listen to you share your story
It doesn’t mean I will be your lover
I will be the other
I will be the calming force when you are lost in fears
I will stand beside you and help protect you from the storm
I will be the box in which you put your pain
I will always be by your side
I will not be your lover
I will share my umbrella in the rain
Fat Rabbit
I want to be the fat rabbit in my backyard
It grazes under the evergreen
No rush to find the next blade of emerging grass
No worries about the changing clocks
Or any clocks at all
The rabbit seems to have taken the winter well
Storms of change forgotten
Thinking only of the next meal
While deep inside an internal call
To find a mate stirs its soul
But not yet
The sun is out
My senior cat watches from behind the screen
She thinks she could take the rabbit down
If I just gave her the chance
But the rabbit doesn’t care
Its burrow is near and its fat body
Moves faster than it would appear
Coyotes may howl as the sun declines
He cocks an ear
Embeds the memory
So his children not yet to be
Will know what is to be loved and what is to be feared
But not today
The sun is out
The flowers I hope will bloom
Are laid out in a row of tiny shoots
To be sampled at a leisurely pace
I wish I were the fat rabbit
Softly hopping closer taunting the cat
I think I was the rabbit once
Before I felt the breath of the predators
Forever on my neck
We both know someday they may come
Our retreat too slow
Our children too taken by the pleasures of the day
But not today
The sun is out
Tomorrow’s pain will wait
Today’s pleasures have just begun
Suburban Drone
40 degrees
My neighbor waves to me as he drags out his lawn mower
He’s spotted a few blades of grass
That eluded the twice weekly cutting
He continued into early December
It’s January now
There is a thaw that is sure not to last
He knows he can’t let this opportunity pass
The engine roars, sputters, nearly dies, comes to life again
He is wearing shorts and a winter cap
Back and forth he goes with a cigarette between his lips
I watch him like it is a car wreck
He comes to a patch of snow in the shade of his porch
It stubbornly resists melting where it is hidden from the sun
My neighbor pauses, pokes it with his toe
Then charges across it with the zeal of a true suburban drone
He curses as the mower coughs and dies
He glares, coughs himself amidst his mumbles
Lights another cigarette
Then he disappears into the garage
Emerges with the weed whacker
With intensity and passion attacks the spot in the shade
No blade of grass can escape the suburban drone
Bio: Peter Kaczmarczyk was raised in Massachusetts but was willing to leave the comfort of
Red Sox country when he learned there were Dunkin Donuts in Indiana.
His writing is assisted by cats. They believe they can write better than him by walking
across the keyboard. Sometimes they do.
Peter’s poetry has been included in over 100 journals and anthologies. He has also
published three chapbooks: Distant Yet Always Heard, The Scars Across My Thigh, and
Could Have Gotten a Cat, and a full-length book, More Than a Whisper.
Peter is co-creator of the Captain Janeway statue in Bloomington, Indiana.
You can find Distant Yet Always Heard here https://a.co/d/0c7bvLRW
You can find The Scars Across My Thigh here https://a.co/d/0fwO7sXg
You can find Could Have Gotten A Cat here https://a.co/d/0gcxK2eG
And you can find More Than A Whisper here https://a.co/d/09Faa6Tu
Thank you, Peter!