Istanbul Literary Review - September 2011 Edition (#21)

1906, Night Boat, Huangpu River

Kelley Jean White

Unwelcome moonlight. Four sisters, huddle
dark in cooks' smoky clothing, hems heavy,
quick-stitched to hide thick silver bars. (The crown
prince's gift to the governor.) They have flown
from their father's court in Shanghai as he
coughs blood in an empty chamber. Second
Mother stamps her big slave feet and bargains
with the barge men, quick flash of silver—knife
or cash. She will bargain with pirates. Sing
praise for the dead man who once spared their lives.

Kelley Jean White

USA

Kelley White is a graduate of Dartmouth College and Harvard Medical School and worked as a pediatrician in inner-city Philadelphia for more than twenty-five years. She has recently returned to her small New Hampshire village and begun work at a rural health center in the North Country. Her poems have been widely published over the past decade, in journals including Exquisite Corpse, Nimrod, Poet Lore, Rattle and the Journal of the American Medical Association and in several chapbooks and full-length collections, most recently TOXIC ENVIRONMENT from Boston Poet Press. She is the recipient of a 2008 Pennsylvania Council on the Arts grant in poetry.

Istanbul Literary Review - September 2011 Edition (#21)