Karina Lutz is a workshop leader, poet, teacher, and lifelong activist. She helped secure passage of sustainable energy legislation, thwart a proposed megaport, and restore wetlands in Rhode Island. In 2013, she received honorable mention from Homebound Publications Poetry Prize for her manuscript, Preliminary Visions.

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Half Smile

Decades after your banishment
I feel your expression wooden
in my cheek muscle:
the face I feared
in mine.
My jaw
creaks
drops

.

I breathe

and muscles melt

.

It was a rigid smile, ready to bite:
the clench of power-over,
born of fear.

Now

                     free

It does not

                     shatter

but evaporates
.
.
.

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