Kay Kestner

Author: Kay Kestner

  • Daily Dose of Poetry – Today’s Poem: To Be Key Maker

    Daily Dose of Poetry – Today’s Poem: To Be Key Maker

    To Be Key Maker

    by Kay Kestner:

    Too many doors are closed. 
    Too many keys are missing. 
    If only I could unlock you. 
    If only I could unlock me. 
    There are too, too many  
    doors closed, and more 
    doors closing every day. 
    And never enough keys. 
    If only I could learn to be 
    a key maker, oh, the doors 
    I would open.  So, so many 
    doors that must be opened. 
    So many many locked doors 
    and millions locked alone 
    behind them.  If only 
    I could make keys 
    instead of poetry. 

    © December, 30, 2009 – Kay Kestner

    Do Something for Democracy

    Given the rapid changes to our government in the United States, it’s vitally important for us to speak up. Silence and apathy will only embolden a leader who serves his own agenda – an agenda that undermines democracy both within the US and around the world.

    Every small act adds up when we all “do something.” Even if it’s just making one call, once a week to one of your representatives – that adds up!

    The resources on the Do Something for Democracy page give you ways you can take action. Find what fits your comfort level. No one can do it all, but we all can do a little something.

    Subscribe today to get your daily dose of poetry:

  • Unstoppable Time – A Short Play – Just for Giggles

    Unstoppable Time – A Short Play – Just for Giggles

    A little something from a writing prompt. Worth a giggle. Certainly not a masterpiece.

    An Unstoppable Time
    A short play
    By Kay Kestner

    Summary:
    A frantic search delays two people from moving forward with their lives.

    Characters:
    SAM: Can be any age, sexual orientation, and gender identity.
    CHRIS: Same. Can be any relation to Sam – partner, friend, sister, etc.

    Time:
    Present day.

    Location:
    Modest, modern living room.

    Lights up. SAM frantically fishes through a purse. CHRIS impatiently watches.

    SAM: It’s not in here. My grandfather’s stopwatch. I can’t go anywhere without it.

    CHRIS: How can you even tell it’s not in there? That bag has more in it than my house does.

    SAM: I know everything in here. What’s in every compartment. Every day that I added something. What I’ve taken out. What’s missing. I know this is missing.

    CHRIS: Then why are you still looking in there?

    SAM: Why are you asking me that? I know what I’m doing.

    CHRIS: Really? You say you know everything that’s in there. That you know it’s not in there. And I’m supposed to believe that you know why you’re still looking for something where you know it isn’t? That makes no sense. (Beat) Where was the last time you saw it? Look there.

    SAM: I saw it in here.

    CHRIS: Then maybe it’s still in there.

    SAM: It’s not. But something in here might tell me when I lost it. Maybe where it went.

    CHRIS: There’s nothing in that purse of yours that knows how to talk. Least, I hope there isn’t.

    SAM: Everything in here knows how to speak. This. (Pulls out a hairbrush.) Listen to this. My hairbrush. (Waves the brush at Chris.) You don’t know the stories this can tell. The history of all the other brushes. The one I sang into as a little child. Tell me you had a hairbrush you sang into as a kid, dreaming you were on a stage.

    CHRIS: No. Not that I would admit if I did.

    SAM: Well, this here brush, it’s not ashamed. It’ll admit it.

    CHRIS: Fine. Then can that brush tell you where your grandpa’s stopwatch went to?

    SAM: No. It’s more of a pastime reminder. (Slips brush back into the purse.)

    CHRIS: Does anything in there keep track of today’s time?

    SAM: What do you mean?

    CHRIS: An antique stopwatch, a reminiscing hairbrush?

    SAM: Yeah?

    CHRIS: Nothing about what is going on today?

    SAM: No. Just the stopwatch to set limits on how and what I spend time on.

    CHRIS: And you’re wasting how much time digging through that purse full of the past, trying to figure out how to spend time today?

    SAM: You’re point?

    CHRIS: Throw the damn purse away!

    SAM: What?!

    CHRIS: Or put it in storage. We’re right here, in this moment. I’m trying to get you to go out and do something now. You’re just digging into the past. Forget the stopwatch and let’s go.

    SAM is shocked and can’t find words.

    CHRIS: I’ll take you somewhere to make a new memory. But we can’t get there until you stop digging through the past. Now, get your nose out of that purse so we can go.

    SAM: But my grandad’s stopwatch?

    CHRIS: Do you really need one? It’s not like you can stop time.

    SAM surrenders the search.

    End of play.

    About the author:
    Kay Kestner grew up working at her family’s store in New Jersey. She’s an internationally published poet and the editor of Poetry Breakfast, an online literary journal publishing poetry and short plays.  Her screenplay, “Art Never Lies,” was a 2022 finalist in the Bigfoot Collaboration with Trinity College Dublin Screenwriting Contest. You can learn more about her work at www.KayKestner.com.

  • No, The Records Are Not For Sale

    No, The Records Are Not For Sale

    This is a bit of a throwback from 2013. Back then, each year, the town we lived in would have a “town-wide yard sale.” It was prime hunting grounds for scavengers looking for broken jewelry and old records to buy cheap and turn around for a few bucks.

    My mother, well, just read the story. She was always ready to say yes to the, “do you have any old records to sell,” question. And I was always up early to be there and butt in with a firm, “NO.”

    No, The Records Are Not For Sale

    It’s time for the town-wide yard sale again.  Which means it’s time for the bombardment of men hopping out of vans only to ask if we have broken jewelry, sports cards, or old records.  Every year, at every yard sale, this happens.  “We have boxes of records,” my mother in her 70’s always says.  And I rush to the rescue before she sells off our family heirlooms to some skuzzy-looking dude that won’t pay her a fraction of what they’re worth.  I protest, not just because he wants to rip off an old lady but also about the worth those records hold in my heart.

              These boxes of records, which my mother is so eager to let go of, are not only full of her old records.  Inside the dusty containers are her Italian father’s records.  There’s even a box full of my father’s German aunts’ old albums.  The collection isn’t just of music.  It’s of the lives they lived and the times they lived in.  They hold everything from my great aunts’ German operas, to grandpa’s Sinatra, to mom’s “West Side Story” and Peter, Paul, and Mary. 

              Every record is a time capsule.  The music of our youth holds a diary of our lives that goes far beyond what the radios played.  Attached to every song are the hopes we had, the first boy we kissed, the friend that died too young, the first trip to the opera in the city, and so much more. 

              It’s not just the songs either.  I could find just about every song in those dusty boxes somewhere on YouTube and listen to them.  It wouldn’t be the same though.  It’s not like a record.  My great aunts and grandfather passed away years before the internet was even a word we imagined we’d hear.  They didn’t go online for their music. 

              They slid black discs out of cardboard and paper sleeves, held them in their hands, let their fingers gently place them on the record player, and carefully placed the needle down letting sound flow out into their living rooms.  Music swept into the kitchen and drifted out the windows into the alleys and the city streets.  My lost relatives touched these things with their flesh and the sound that resulted touched their hearts.  The music sprung memories into their heads, stirred thoughts, and momentarily made them forget about the struggles, the wars they lived through, and everything that troubled their hard-fought lives.

              “No, the records aren’t for sale,”  I’m keeping them.  I have to insist on this to every scavenger looking to turn a quick buck off the history of my family kept in the records in the attic.  My mother always frowns.  She was looking for a few dollars and won’t be getting them now because I won’t let her sell the records.

              With another town-wide yard sale coming this weekend, I decide it’s time to explain to my mother why I won’t let her sell them.  I tell her that someday I will get myself a record player again and I will slide every black vinyl from its worn-out sleeve and listen to every song my great aunts, grandfather, and she had listened to in the years before I was even born.  I will remember my aunts’ faces, the stories they told of traveling the world as just a teacher and nurse, of their German heritage and I will see their living room full of treasures that they gathered in their travels.  I’ll be transported back to my mother’s house in Bayonne.  I’ll remember grandpa sitting in the dining room and I’ll recall the story of how my mother shocked him as he came home one day to hear the sounds of “West Side Story” gusting out the windows into the alleyway.  I will touch what they touched.  I will hear what they heard.  I will go back to where they were.  I will be with them again.

              No, the records are not for sale.

    …And in 2022, they’re still not for sale.

  • June 6 Poetry and Events

    June 6 Poetry and Events

    Listen to a poetry reading of the 2022 version of “Until the End.”

    Flashback to June 6, 1999:

    Some highlights of the day, my favorite being the UK’s #1 Song: Everybody’s Free (To Wear Sunscreen) – Baz Luhrmann. A mix of music and spoken word, absolutely worth the listen. That one’s been in my Spotify liked songs for quite some times.

    Meanwhile, in the US #1 Song: If You Had My Love – Jennifer Lopez. Clearly the UK had the better choice in the music department.

    Of course, there was also the largest jailbreak in Brazilian history. And Anne Haddy, the Australian actress passed away.

    And finally, June 6, 1999, was the birthday of this poem. In 2010, eleven years after its birth, it found publication in the literary journal Legendary.

    Here it is, on its 23rd birthday…(and I ask: Are you older or younger than this poem?)

    Until The End 


Too often I am fed 
only my inadequacies. 
My right arm too weak to hold 
up the ceiling.  And in the left 
my still-born son. 

My legs that could not run fast  
enough to catch my ghost as 
she left me. 
 

Daily, 
I could not be nourished on these. 
My weakness ever starving me. 

Yet, constant is my blood pulsing, 
never surrendering.  Even after defeat. 
Even after I am captured. 

Always, the sacrifice dies screaming, 
kicking violently at the face of God. 
Once she is tied to the stake, and 
the torch is pressed to the timber 
the vow is made stronger.  Fire 
burns belief hotter. 

The damned cannot alter allegiance. 
It is too late.  Conviction is forever. 


This is my strength:  In all of my failure 

I have not surrendered. 

(c) Kay Kestner - 1999

  • A Collaboration Under the Rainbow

    A Collaboration Under the Rainbow

    In collaboration with the Ministry of Artistic Intent and the Water Witch Poetry & Reading Series, Poetry Breakfast held an editor’s roundtable reading at the Water Witch Coffee House this past Thursday.

    Greeting us as we gathered was a lovely rainbow over the Water Witch Coffee House.

    The evening began with a workshop on submitting poetry for publication in literary journals, led by Poetry Breakfast’s founder and editor, Kay Kestner. Who was also the evening’s featured reader.

    After the open mic portion of the night, Kay gave a little guidance on Poetry Breakfast’s esthetic and then let the group have a go at being guest editors for the night.

    Poetry Breakfast would like the thank the wonderful artists, musicians and poets that helped review poetry submissions and bring a few new flavors to our menu.

    Guest Editors:

    Sean Navat Balanon – Sean is an artist from Old Bridge, NJ.  He has a BA in Music Technology from Stevens Institute of Technology.  Sean illustrates and makes video art.

    Jon Davies – Jon is a musician, writer, and vagrant who has traveled throughout the United States.

    John Flood – John is a local photographer, poet and musician focused on documenting and exposing the vibrant Monmouth County arts scene.  

    Charles Ignar –  Charles is a local emerging poet.  He is a mainstay at the Water Witch Poetry Workshop & Reading where he shares his work and enjoys hearing the diverse work of other poets.

    Chelsea Palermo – Chelsea is the founder of the Ministry of Artistic Intent. She is the hostess and organizer of the Water Witch Poetry & Reading Series.  In 2013 she was nominated for Poet Laureate of Asbury Park.  She graduated with her MFA in Poetry from Drew University.

    Patricia Rinaldi – Patricia is a poet and regular attendee of the Water Witch Poetry Workshop & Reading Series.  She consistently brings encouragement to all the poets at the Water Witch.

    Our Mystery Guest Editor – Though he chose to remain anonymous – anonymous is certainly not the word to describe this vibrant poet, writer, and musician.  He has actively participated in and fiercely promoted the local poetry and music scene for many years and he continues to draw attention to new and emerging artists in Monmouth County.