Karen Bowden is a writer, editor and desktop publisher, but has also worked at occupations ranging from forklift driver to legal secretary. Karen has been associated with a number of art festivals, and literary journals. She has also performed poetry, her own, throughout Arizona. Her publications include poems in What’s a Nice Girl Like You Doing in a Relationship like this? Anthology published by Crossing Press: The Mac Guffin, The Valley Guide, Polite Chaos (handset anthology from Smiling Dog Press) Poet Lore, Haydens Ferry Review, Abby, WIND Magazine, Gypsy among others.

For Kritya, Karen is not only a sincere reader but a reliable contributor. She has translated Chinese poetry with Aliya Ma Lynn for Kritya which will be published in future issues. Here we have presented the poems she has send, along with translations.






A Fool for Love
 
“. . . at dawn a donkey sobbing.” -Anais Nin

With your mind in a bag on your back,
you go on from the edge of unnumbered dawns
toward each dusk, the wild cat
biting your left leg white.

You go past the obelisk
on its side, past the wide open
mouth of the crocodile, toward
wet papyrus, your waist wound
with constellations. You go on
toward the one you were made
to carry, the one who also wept,

with the red-orange patch
of your many colored coat
over your heart.