Winner of The Letter Review Prize for Poetry
Translations
The English language is a complicated thing.
Especially when his love language is
action: he pumps air in the tires of my Prius;
he recalls car keys I left by the bathtub
so I can exit our front door on time.
What I want is words of appreciation:
How he loves my watermelon, mint and
cucumber salad when it’s 89 degrees.
Or the note I wrote for
his mother’s Mothers Day card.
I barely hold onto the words he says:
“Do you want to go to a topless
bar?” I hear him ask me in Madrid.
“Why would I want to go to a topless bar?”
I answer. “No,” he says, “a tapas bar.
Why would you think I want to go to
a topless bar?” Now he is the one
who sounds annoyed.
And so it goes: we collide through great
gaps in human language.
And yet: steady love gathers
me in its grasp.
Icarus (Revised)
The true story of Icarus
differs from the myth––lies, really
to disguise
what actually happened:
not a story of failure and hubris;
a pivot.
The true part: beeswax melted
his wings’ edges while close to the sun.
But he never fell to the sea.
Minos, so bent
on control, or its appearance,
wanted the world to believe
Icarus suffered a terrible fate.
So Minos paid a ploughman
by the sea to report a crash.
Yet Icarus flew farther
than anyone imagined.
He stopped in the Canary Islands
to rest, assess,
and repair
his wings for longer flight.
Let other people have their stories,
Icarus told himself. He set his sights
higher: flew to the New World.
All this talk of Icarus today.
Minos is mostly
forgotten.
Icarus lives––
no matter which version
you choose to believe.
KM Kramer is a writer, previously a First Amendment attorney, who feels most at home in California. She earned her undergraduate and law degrees at Stanford. Her creative works can be found in Action Spectacle, Rogue Agent, Free the Verse, Last Stanza Poetry Journal, and other places. Her debut poetry chapbook, Remaking, was longlisted by Frontier Poetry under a different title and is forthcoming by Finishing Line Press in 2026. Currently she is completing a manuscript, Selected Heirlooms, that explores intergenerational trauma.