Readings

You were there, not conscious but in body, when they draped you, intubated and hooked you to a ventilator ...

Lately, I've wanted to cut my hair, shorten my skirt, shed my years like the long skinny snakes ...

I am from an Irish Clan’s love,

strong as bedrock, deep as ocean. I am from a surgeon's scalpel ...

As spring springs and buds bud, soon petals push open and bees bumble. Everywhere, breezes.

Garden gargoyle, rumpled of brow, drowsy of eye, pointy of ear, peeks at me as I work the earth ...

She puffs and the flame, bending and swaying at the top of the solitary birthday candle ...

We’d arrived at the ER just after midnight, January 5, 2016—ironically, Mom’s eighty-first birthday.

Our neighborhood has a sidewalk chalk artist, and I think she’s a girl. Twelve, maybe thirteen ...

I’ve had a headache for thirty days. OK, I’m lying. It’s closer to sixty, but sixty days sounds terribly long.

Ann Kathryn Kelly reads her essay “Angie” for the Unlatched Open Mic Podcast, produced in London.

Ann Kathryn Kelly reads her essay “The Pull” for the Unlatched Open Mic Podcast, produced in London.