Patricia Killelea
 
 
Honest Light
 
 

We’re leaden with ghosts,

                    with doors that won’t stay shut.

We never knew how many bodies

                    would come and go,

                              mostly go;

How many times we’d have to stand

                    in sharpest rain,

digested without voice.

No days enter without knives;

no faces exit without trace.

Beside and among me, they

reside—the faded

ones, the former loves.

                                           Even honest light

                                           fails.

Patricia Killelea is a mixed-heritage Chicana poet, musician, and scholar. She is the author of the poetry collection Other Suns, which is available from Swan Scythe Press (2011), and is currently a Ph.D Candidate in Native American Studies at the University of California at Davis. She holds a Master’s degree in Creative Writing and English, also from UC Davis. Originally from the Bay Area, CA, she has taught the Introduction to Native American Literature course at UC Davis since Fall 2009, and has recently completed her second poetry manuscript, titled Counterglow. A former artist-in-residence at the Santa Fe Art Institute, Patricia is also the bassist/lyricist in the metal band Valley of Thorns, and is currently producing experimental video poems. Find out more about her work at www.patriciakillelea.com