New Year’s Eve, A Graphite Apartment
by Robert Frede Kenter
I have holes of light flooding my body. When Father asked me in which direction we should proceed, I said let’s head to the sassafras trees at the South Shore Point. When mother said to me, Oh look, the rose in the glass by the window is dying, I held my hand out and gave her another one. I spit the skin of the milk from the glass into the fireplace. Mother played Chopin on the black and white keys of her beige piano. Every baby born on New Year’s after midnight is photographed. I remember you said, you were one of them. That was many years ago. They lined three babies up in front of a birthday cake. You kept the photograph that appeared in the New Year’s day edition of the daily newspaper, and kept it between dictionary pages like one would an autumn leaf. Father said, A fool can make a joke out of their own person. I was never completely sure what he meant. Rose stems, thorns on a plant that never bloomed. Standing still by snow-covered ledges, tiny crowns, the webbed feet of crows, drawing in graphite on a folio, exploring haptic lines, a cluster of melodies, a cartography of memories.
Robert Frede Kenter is an internationally published writer, visual artist & publisher of Ice Floe Press (www.icefloepress.net) Robert has work in over 200 publications including: Watch Your Head, Harpy Hybrid, ballast, winged moon, ABR, storms journal, heavy feathers, petrichor, Cable Street, Burning House, Blood & Honey, Otoliths. Anthologies include: Capitalism is a Death Cult (Sunday Mornings), Speaking in Tongues (Steel Incisors), Interpoem (Sedserio), Glisk and Glimmer (Sidhe Press). Select books: Moon Writing (with Catherine Graham) (Ice Floe Press, 2026), In the Blueprint of Her Iris (with Vikki C) (Ice Floe Press, 2025), Father Tectonic (Ethel Zine, 2025), Audacity of Form (Ice Floe Press, 2019). Find him on social media at X: @frede_kenter, IG: icefloe22, r.f.k.vispocityshuffle, and Bluesky: @rfredekenter.bsky.social.
Graphite Apartment, photo-based collage with hand painted elements, Autumn 2024. Click image to enlarge.