Karen Bingham Pape teaches and writes fiction and poetry, and her poems have appeared in small press publications in print, 
including Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, and online and have been read at conferences such as Southwestern ACA/PCA Pop Culture, CCTE, 
ASU Annual Writers Conferences in Honor of Elmer Kelton, and Fort Concho Literary Festival. 
 


 

Like Clay

The class waits like clay to be wholly filled
By the woman who comes into the room
With esoteric knowledge with the tools

To navigate life.  Somewhere between tiller
And wrench, those tools must be honed.
The class waits like clay to be wholly filled.

The teacher bleeds with creative will—
She wants to stir bones to passion
With esoteric knowledge with the tools

With some quiet magic of the word, still
Holy, like some archaic spirit she divines
The class waiting like clay to be wholly filled

Not only master of the dance, the shrill
Lost tones of those behind the canon,
With esoteric knowledge with the tools

She shows her changeling self her Jill
And Jack to those who want and want to know.
The class waits like clay to be wholly filled
With esoteric knowledge with the tools.