Jeffrey Kingman
Winter 2025 | Poetry
When We Were Kids
They won’t see what you
want them to see.
The ghost, sheet replaced with a comforter.
Coffin on wheels rolling the hallways.
Tourist in Chartres to distract from your
skeletal horse-ridden half.
Blue stain on your spirit, the glass rubbed off.
I left home at 14 is a safe bet.
An old soul adrift in France.
They wouldn’t be so rude if you were double.
You’d rather go to a simpler place
but when they deny what’s best for you
you tend to evaporate.
Under a willow tree
we trapped fireflies in our cupped hands at dusk.
Jeffrey Kingman lives by the Napa River in Vallejo, California. His poetry collection, BEYOND THAT HILL I GATHER, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2021. His poetry chapbook, ON A ROAD, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2019. He is the winner of the 2018 Eyelands Book Award (Greece) for an unpublished poetry book, a finalist in the 2018 Hillary Gravendyk poetry book competition, and a finalist in the 2022 Prime Number Magazine Award for Poetry. He has poems published in PANK, Clackamas Literary Review, Crack the Spine, Visitant, and others. Jeffrey is a copy editor at Omnidawn Publishing. He has a Master’s degree in Music Composition and has been playing drums in rock bands most of his life.