"DRONE"

Kim Garcia is the author of The Brighter House, winner of the 2015 White Pine Press Poetry Prize, DRONE, winner of the 2015 Backwaters Prize, and Madonna Magdalene, released by Turning Point Books in 2006. Her chapbook Tales of the Sisters won the 2015 Sow’s Ear Poetry Review Chapbook Contest. Her poems have appeared in such journals as Crab Orchard Review, Crazyhorse, Mississippi Review, Nimrod and Subtropics, and her work has been featured on The Writer’s Almanac. Recipient of the 2014 Lynda Hull Memorial Prize, an AWP Intro Writing Award, a Hambidge Fellowship and an Oregon Individual Artist Grant, Garcia teaches creative writing at Boston College.

She applied the Page 69 Test to DRONE and reported the following:

From page 69:

"Kindred"

The hand at work, heart’s drone,
map-dance in honeycomb. The path

of flower, clover song, sweet magnetic
north, nectar cooled in flight. River

rocks’ remembered wash, a karst of blue.
A sky mountainous with frowning cloud,

stars slipping the city’s hot gaze, fastening
their new eyes over fresh yearnings—home

drawn up along the lines of the old ache
like desert seed, fashioning green tongues.

At first look “Kindred” is very different from many of the poems in DRONE, a book that meditates on the terrifying repercussions and temptations of a weapon that changes military rules of engagement, what a war zone is, and even how we think of the sky. But this poem speaks to two thematic threads that weave DRONE together—the longing for peace, despite every challenge created by these slippery, powerful new weapons, and the state of belonging which we all share as a ground of our being. Warfare quickly devolves into total war, unending war, without keeping these two realities present, even under tremendous conflicting pressures. Drones have made possible a level of surveillance, and therefore responsibility, never before experienced. We need all our collective human wisdom to respond in policy, poetry, and procedure. We are in truth “Kindred.”

Visit Kim Garcia's website.

The Page 69 Test: Madonna Magdalene.

The Page 69 Test: The Brighter House.

--Marshal Zeringue