edited by courtney marie
With three books on the way this year, there’s no doubt Paul Koniecki is a poetic powerhouse. He’s been tangled up in the ‘web for at least a couple years now, shouting and whispering from the stage, dedicating poems to close poet friends & artists, and listening closely the words of others. Always a tenderheart, Paul told us that a recent work of art that really shook him was a mosaic by DFW-based artist Rebecca Collins that was so beautiful it made him cry.
Catch Paul co-hosting Meet Me With Curiosity this weekend (June 2) alongside mutual poetfriends Reverie Evolving and Alejandra Ramos Gómez at Kylde Warren Park in Dallas! The event will feature a performance by Spiderweb co-founder courtney marie, as well as readings by talented poets from across the country: Mag Gabbert, Jennifer Militello, and Paige Ackerson-Kiely. Meanwhile, please enjoy this poem Paul kindly wrote for the Spiderweb community while on the way to a hill where he writes with his love. Paul says it was furiously edited with assistance from Townes Van Zandt and Nina Simone. We are all about it.
come to break apart
what the world has done
Out of green paper
I wish for emerald dye
folding you an origami turtle
as you sleep with your head
on the lap of the sun.
Licking the creases I
taste the last crescent
gasp of the moon.
Equally concerned by
the silence with which
you are managing to
un-breathe down
the staircase of these lines
I mention oxygen is
the currency of love.
You blow dry a fore leg.
I remake the pigment of her iris
in an ejecting solar flare.
She the turtle
is falling in a dream.
We solve a Rubik’s
Cube with paint. I shake
the paper amphibian
by the shoulder-shell.
You blow-dry the end.
She whispers you win you win
you win when our final hour
is an honest lover
come to break apart
what the world has done.
Paul got #PLEASED with us in Denton a couple weeks ago. Photo by Leah Jones
Paul Koniecki is a Dallas poet. He has three new books of poetry coming out in 2018. He helped to start and hosts Meet Me With Curiosity the Poetry Show at Klyde Warren Park.
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