Deborah Kahan Kolb

Happy Earth Day 🌍 and happy “due date” to my first girl, my springtime baby, born three days late 13 years ago... “The Gestures of Trees” celebrates the emergence of life, a hopeful notion that I need to keep in the forefront of my mind during these challenging times....

Re(vision)

An old man I know–a great grandfather–

 steps into the tattoo parlor, tells the artist,

I am ready to begin my life.

Eight lingering decades carried in his creased cheeks.

Five blue numerals etched in h...

Write Me NYC premiere: New York Jewish Film Festival, Sunday, January 26, 2020 (Lincoln Center, NYC)

Write Me World premiere: Aug 11, 2019 at Flickers Rhode Island International Film Festival (Providence, RI)

Cindependent Film Festival, Aug 29-31, 2019 (Cincinnati, OH):

...

My second chapbook of poems is now on sale from Finishing Line Press! Reserve your copy today in support and celebration of poetry and independent publishers:

https://www.finishinglinepress.com/product/escape-of-light-by-deborah-kahan-kolb/

New short story published in Lunch Ticket.

After Auschwitz

I am vague I am hazy I am indistinct

I am bodiless-

but my black Romani blood river runs    

boils and bubbles and

pushes up Piotr’s daisies

I am faceless-

but my non-Aryan features glow searing hot

my crippled mouth and communist eyes

coal to cinder

fu...

On the anniversary of the white nationalist rally turned deadly riot, I offer this poem published today on New Verse News: 

Charlottesville: A Cautionary Tale

The Nazis have returned. To Charlottesville, VA.

            Pale wizards, frenzied mass, mad with purity....

Emerging, Art of       

Check the box that best describes

your career thus far, the form says, or how you see

yourself as a writer.

It seems I’ve been emerging

for a number of years now. But how do I see

myself - tunneling down the dark fleshy corridor

of my mo...

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This poem addresses the damage caused by teen marriage and pregnancy in insular communities.

Published in Literary Mama (November 2017) 

Au Pair       

I.

A cape starling or amethyst, some little bird –

Afrikaans

warbler, shows up in the greening spring, miniature

flicker-beat fluffing her breast, and gingerly finds

her perch among

our young. From somewhere within the murmuration

she exhales, violet-b...