Christopher Kennedy s the author of Clues from the Animal Kingdom (BOA Editions, Ltd., 2018) Ennui Prophet (BOA Editions, Ltd., 2011), Encouragement for a Man Falling to His Death (BOA Editions, Ltd., 2007), which received the Isabella Gardner Poetry Award, Trouble with the Machine (Low Fidelity Press, 2003), and Nietzsche’s Horse (Mitki/Mitki Press, 2001). He is one of the translators of Light and Heavy Things: Selected Poems of Zeeshan Sahil, BOA Editions, Ltd., 2013), published as part of the Lannan Translation Series. His work has appeared in many print and on-line journals and magazines, including Ploughshares, Plume, New York Tyrant, Ninth Letter, Wigleaf, The Threepenny Review, Mississippi Review, and McSweeney’s. In 2011,
he was awarded an NEA Fellowship for Poetry. He is a professor of English at Syracuse University where he directs the MFA Program in Creative Writing.
Christopher Kennedy
3 Poems
An angry Christ enters limbo with a cross held over his head like a spear. He’s pushing open the door and appears to be crushing three demons made of burnished silver, one with bloody hands, crying out from its bird-like head.
Christopher Kennedy
3 Poems
Triptych: Analogy of Faith
Christ in Limbo
An angry Christ enters limbo with a cross held over his head
like a spear. He’s pushing open the door and appears to be
crushing three demons made of burnished silver, one with
bloody hands, crying out from its bird-like head. (Who guards
the gates of limbo?) I saw a wild thing with a funnel over its
head, running away past some creatures who appear to be
gambling at a baize-covered table. Elsewhere a flayed body
hangs upside down near some severed limbs.
Outside my window, Canada geese lift skyward with their
black and white heads held above the frantic beating of
wings, the sky darkens, and a flickering shadow covers the
lawn for a few moments.
The rest of the panel is a landscape of suffering that belies
how I was told the unbaptized spend eternity. I had pictured
a large room, empty except for unfortunate babies tended by
pagans who had lived good lives, a kind of netherworld
nursery where nothing ever happens.
Self Portrait
It’s been said that Bosch placed his own face, placid, whitish
gray, in the Hell panel of The Garden of Earthly Delights. It’s
what stands out to me, the stealthy calm inside the storm of
tortured flesh, his head a ghostly Where’s Waldo?, hidden in
plain sight in the painting of the monsters in his head. In his
head, a hell much worse than anyone had ever dreamed of,
and his eyes, askance, as if he could see beyond the menagerie
of tortured souls and his Prince of Hell to the Heaven panel,
places I no longer bother to imagine.
This World
I click the tab and it closes. The screen is black. It is black
outside, too. I can see the blood moon out the window now,
watching me, winking as in an old cartoon. The moon
disappears behind a cloud as if eaten by one of Bosch’s
demons. I sit and wait for it to be expelled. The room shades
dark as a confessional.
Family Tree
I watched the Christmas tree fly sideways like an arrow on to
the lawn. Lights and bulbs cracking, a missile aimed at
sorrow. There was a halo around the moon. A streetlight
flickered above the boulevard. My mother stood on the
stoop, breathing hard, so that I could see she was alive. Not
everyone was. And anyways the slipknot comfort of the past
is just another noose, hanging from an old catalpa.
I never saw my shadow then when it wasn't being eaten by
the shade, and looking back, it's gone, replaced by a mutant
shape. The sky sparks briefly in the distance tonight, stagnant
with heat. I kill the time that's killing me, nirvana-starved,
calm, meditating on the mute indifference of the room,
becoming so small I could be eaten by a flea—but I grow like
a seed into the tree of myself, rooted, a rope around my
sturdy neck.
Waves and Particles
I wake from a dream of digging my own grave to the sound
of my neighbor who has lost both his legs, shoveling his walk,
scraping his metal blade across the bricks that lead to his
front door. The violet light of early dawn filters through the
bathroom window and reflects off the mirror, a wash of
waves and particles. A crow glides toward a dead deer’s body
on the shoulder of the main highway. Two thousand miles
away, a scorpion waits in the sand for a horse to pass, its
stinger taut and arched behind its back. I see the black shoe
you left behind, fallen to its side. There is no need for life on
other planets.
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Christopher Kennedy
What are 2 - 3 books (fiction, comic, memoir, poetry, essay, &c.) that you've read over the last year or less that really blew your hair back?
My head is shaved, but here goes: The Largesse of the Sea Maiden by Denis Johnson; Sing to It by Amy Hempel; Tonight I'm Someone Else by Chelsea Hodson
Who is someone you admire who does work that you feel really benefits your community, and what kind of work is it that they do?
Sarah Harwell, the Associate Director of the MFA Program at Syracuse. Aside from being a wonderful poet and fiction writer, she works endlessly to keep the program together with genuine regard for the well-being of all the students and faculty.
What made the strangest date you’ve ever been on just that?
There were so many of us, it was hard to remember everyone's name.
Considering the expectations of publishers and readers, is there room in writing for the presentation of works in progress, and/or for works which collaborate with the audience (rather than another writer)? What do you think a successful attempt at this might look like?
Movie you were/are most excited to show your real, or theoretical, 5 year old kid? And 12 year old kid?
Anything by Lars von Trier. Actually, my daughter said I showed her Queen of Hearts (the British film released in 1989) when she was around 5 or 6 and Singles when she was 11 or 12, so I'll go with those.