Claudia Kessel - Samsara

In her epic “Samsara”, poet Claudia Kessel leans the ancient tenants of Buddhism against the gritty reality of the 21st Century. She doesn’t hide the harshness of modern suffering from readers as the nine cantos of “Samsara” work arduously toward some sort of enlightenment. “‘Samsara’ is a sequence of nine short poems that explore the Buddhist concept of samsara, the eternal cycle of death and re-birth propelled by desire, ignorance, and fear,” Claudia explained to The Dewdrop, continuing, “It delves into themes of appetite and addiction in its many forms.”

Samsara

Fentanyl
At the moment when icicles stiffen the fingers
of the white pine whose green silence
leans over the north side of the ridge,
shadowing the gaunt dog chained in the backyard
decorated with dirty pink flamingos stranded in snow clumps,
a child’s broken swing,
the rusted husk of a Chevy,
aluminum cans spilling half-incinerated garbage
next to the trailer’s fog-windowed bedroom:
the truck driver’s son
shoots God
up into the vein
of his left arm.

Hunger
Despite the First Noble Truth,
the insane impulse of the body to go on living:
for the mouth to swallow bread,
for the blood-swollen key to find its moist lock.
Sugar burnishes the tongue,
mind submits to the larceny of salt.
We are out of sync, askew, off-kilter,
wet hearts flopping, lips cracked, belly caverned.
Thoughts drill in spirals.
Gaping lips, a hole never to be filled.
My face, a grimaced clown,
swallowing.

Monkey Mind
Murmuration of starlings
in my lungs, a gasp of birds
refusing to settle
on the mind’s branch who
chitter, hop, flutter, preen.
What calms them—
only the 6pm glass of pinot, or
the bright buzz of my phone
with its promise of color, headlines,
bustle of billions, the faces of the living
who are also the faces of the dying,
the faces who may
or may not love me
— and only for a moment.

Love Letters
Perched at the scalding edge
of desire, I am the crumble of
crinkled paper after the fire
raged through, the burnt woods
whose clawed branches scratched the cheeks
of Dionysus’s wild maenad
in rampage, the pacing panther
who guards inferno’s gate
where ash rains flakes of hidden letters,
singed brown at the edges.

Angst
Obsessive thoughts— they’re what keep us alive.
Miserable, yes, but living.
That and the relentless ferocity of appetite.
And that sporadic, sudden fever
of tongue for tongue.

Happy Hour
Too quickly consumed—
Merlot’s winter hearth in the belly,
the honeyed chill of Reisling’s Rhenish gold,
Zinfandel’s crisp watermelon kiss of summer,
and that elixir poured through the corridor of your blue eyes.
We approach pleasure, retract from pain.
Once we’ve imbibed the nectar,
tasted cloying sweetness,
how can we stop
after the first glass?

A Journey
From Svadhistana to Ajna,
from Chakra Two to Chakra Six,
marga’s long and narrow road,
from the small star of fire at the pelvis
to the root of the tree,
the crossroad between the eyes.

Palace of Broken Things
I want plastic. Tupperware for my microwave dinners and cute containers to organize my pens and paperclips. I want a new set of silverware, although we never have people over, and a coffee maker to replace the old one that groans and steams with age. Touch, click, swipe. Plastic Legos for my son who scatters them around the house, who complains I never play with him, a ream of printer ink, a Rolex for my husband’s fortieth birthday to prove my devotion. Swipe, click, done. I want a new pair of trendy sneakers since my left shoe sprouted a hole at the tip of the sole. A ceramic fox for mom’s mantelpiece to replace the shattered one; too bad we only see her at Christmas. Two more novels, and a book on American history for Kimberly, although I haven’t seen her in three years. Swipe, click, done. Purchased on Amazon. Delivered to my doorstep tomorrow by another stranger. It’s only a little exercise for my thumbs. A plastic bag of groceries, kibble for my dog, the only living being whose love for me isn’t marked with ambivalence. Swipe, type, press. A bright blue rug because the old one is faded and sad. I sit here in my enormous brick box of want, stacking the shelves, filling boxes in the attic. I sit in my rectangle, on my pile, on my heap of objects in my suburb, in my America. In my palace of broken things.

Preta, Realm of the Hungry Ghost
Sinking to the realm of chthonic
creatures with swollen bellies and tiny mouths,
the body has a way of calling us back.
Appetite will never take its leave,
only in death.

Will nothing stop this weeping at my desk?
Not the sparkling glint of August’s sunset on the creek,
nor rose-of-sharon’s fawning mouth,
flute’s hollow whisper through my window
woven with the cicada’s grating ostinato,
not the gin in my glass,
not even the clutch of my father’s wooden rosary
will quench the longing for the mute
language of your pale hands.

Claudia Kessel

Claudia Kessel works as a grant writer in Williamsburg, Virginia and is pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing at Old Dominion University. Her poetry has been published in Richmond Magazine, in the 2024 Poetry Society of Virginia anthology, and in various literary journals, including Ekstasis, Arkana, The Ekphrastic Review, The Write Launch, Literary Mama, Uppagus, and Lullwater Review. Read more at www.claudiakessel.com.