Kathleen Holliday

Kathleen Holliday’s poems have appeared in Cathexis Northwest Press, New Ohio Review, Nimrod International Journal, Poet Lore, Poetry Super Highway, SHARK REEF, The Write Launch, and other journals. Her chapbooks, Putting My Ash on the Line, (2020), Boatman, Pass By (2023), and A Cage in Search of a Bird (2025) were published by Finishing Line Press.

“Persephone’s Dream of Spring,” “Flotilla,” and “Forgive Us”

While it was dark,
(and hellishly cold!)
the earth a frozen stone,
I dreamt of loam
and pomegranates,
and a warm, green shore,
and a boat to ferry me home.

“My Near-Death Experience”

As near-death experiences go,
it was one of the best.
What more is there to tell?

“Lifeboat in the Apocalypse,” “The News of Your Death” and “The Gift of a Green Scarf”

I haven’t always wanted to be
in the same boat with them
but when the time comes, I hope
there’ll be room for me in that lifeboat

“The Last Days of the Dinosaurs”

In third grade, one afternoon,
we were ushered into the auditorium
for a 16mm animated film
about dinosaurs.
As comets and asteroids fell,
pocking the earth,
so did the huge creatures,

“The Wine-Dark Sea” and “The Weighing of the Heart”

A sea wife,
my mother didn’t have time
to pace a widow’s walk,
searching for a sail on the horizon.

She was too busy
pinning up sheets to dry,
weeding the garden…
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