Señor Squirrel
by Kris Bigalk
The habeñero peppers were no accident.
I grew them
especially for you,
to watch you pluck a bright yellow bonnet,
turn it over in your hands like a topazor tourmaline, then sink your bicuspids
hard into the flesh, only to throw
on fire with my revenge, tail stiff
and high as you raced for your burrow
as I laughed, counting the losses
I had suffered at your paws – tulip bulbs,
sunflower heads, sleepy mornings
interrupted by your family arguments
in the tree outside my window…
Me gusto, Señor Squirrel.
Joyce Sutphen, Minnesota's Poet Laureate, on Repeat the Flesh in Numbers: "Rewriting Eve, rewriting her own life, Kris Bigalk doesn't shy away from anything. She takes on the sordid and the beautiful, the scientific and the biblical, the mathematical and the musical. These poems celebrate "the imperfect, the mortal," loving it for all its wild complexity."
Kris' poems also appear in the photography/poetry anthology Open to Interpretation: Water’s Edge. Recent issues of Rougarou, Pif, Hip Mama, Blood Lotus Review and Silk Road literary magazines feature her poetry and reviews. Kris serves as Director of Creative Writing at Normandale Community College.
For more information about Kris’ poetry, including upcoming readings in the Twin Cities, please visit her webpage at http://krisbigalk.com
What I love best about Kris' poems is that in addition to their very fine craft--somehow she always finds just the right word, just the right sound--is that they embrace a life-affirming humor. They might be revealing a brutal truth about human experience, but always the reader finds a wry smile, too. We are all in this together, Bigalk suggests, so we might as well enjoy the ride.
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