ERIK KENNEDY

Issue Two

WHAT THINKING FEELS LIKE

I reckon I remember

how the story goes,

but then I come to

the moment in the fable

when the man pulls the thorn

out of the lion’s paw,

and the thorn turns out to be

another tiny lion,

rampant and raging,

who also needs assuaging.

About Erik Kennedy
Erik Kennedy (he/him) is the author of the poetry collections Another Beautiful Day Indoors (2022) and There's No Place Like the Internet in Springtime (2018), both with Te Herenga Waka University Press, and he has co-edited No Other Place to Stand, a book of climate change poetry from Aotearoa New Zealand and the Pacific forthcoming from Auckland University Press in 2022. His poems, stories, and criticism have been published in places like FENCE, Hobart, Maudlin House, Poetry, Poetry Ireland Review, the TLS, and Western Humanities Review. Originally from New Jersey, he lives in Ōtautahi Christchurch in Aotearoa New Zealand.