Two Poems
Steven Kent

Tennessee

I do believe this heat might kill me yet.

Though summer is for some the perfect time,

I would as soon the summer just forget.

The autumn or the spring? A better bet—

Both seasons bless my soul with temperate clime.

I do believe this heat might kill me yet.

Of winters, I have only one regret:

I failed to love them fully in my prime.

I would as soon the summer just forget.

I swear, today before the sun has set

I’ll perish (not because of any crime)—

I do believe this heat might kill me yet.

The air’s insanely hot and soaking wet;

I curse here Mother Nature’s paradigm.

I would as soon the summer just forget,

For I am covered head-to-toe in sweat,

Too irritated now to find a rhyme.

I do believe this heat might kill me yet;

I would as soon the summer just forget.

- - -

The High Life

I wish that I could be a tanager

Instead of an assistant manager.

I’d ride the winds above the seahorses

And never deal with human resources.

If only I could be a willow tit

And come and go just when I feel like it.

I’d live so free in bush or birdhouses,

Not like my bosses with their third houses.

Ah, what if I were just a cardinal?

I’d never start, “I beg your pardon, all”

And worry over what I might’ve said

Last time I spoke to my department head.

Yes, life’s a breeze among the chickadees,

With no interns demanding “help me, please.”

I’d sleep in peace atop the highest tree

And not be on the corporate registry.

I long to be a gentle mourning dove

And fly so far away the morning of

This pointless meeting going nowhere fast—

Oh, let me be a lonely bird at last!

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Steven’s notes: “I’ve written only a few villanelles, but I do enjoy the challenges inherent in the form. (I’m still not sure what led me to think it was the right one for ‘Tennessee.’) Summer in the American Southeast really is this uncomfortable; I have no idea how anyone lived there before the invention of air conditioning. Thanks to Jerome Betts for publishing this poem in Lighten Up Online. ‘The High Life’ was a peculiar experiment in which I attempted to end every line with a double unstress, which kinda-sorta worked until I got to the last stanza. This one appeared in The Lyric.“

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Steven Kent is the poetic alter ego of writer and musician Kent Burnside (www.kentburnside.com). His work appears in 251, Asses of Parnassus, The Dirigible Balloon, Light, Lighten Up Online, The Lyric, New Verse News, The Orchards Poetry Journal, Philosophy Now, The Pierian, Pulsebeat Poetry Journal, The Road Not Taken: A Journal of Formal Poetry, Snakeskin, and Well Read. His collections I Tried (And Other Poems, Too) (2023) and Home at Last (2025) are published by Kelsay Books.

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Two Poems Steven Kent

Two Poems
Steven Kent