Waiting

I’ve come home to molding fruit

cold air it’s because I’m rarely here

not to worry in a week or so

I’ll have a new home

empty rooms I’ll fill

with the remnants again of a life had

for 18 months and now this

the true break     for some reason

this place feels like a holding port

the base of God’s hands

not purgatory where I’ve waited

like the poor with ear infections

in the ER waiting room

like me with an ear infection

in an ER waiting room

my name has been called

and the ear drum has already burst

I’ve let the liquid slide down my neck

again     ill box up what I want

give away what I don’t.

My name has been called.

Letter to What Is or Will Be

Dear bright future

tell me I’m standing in the middle of your heart

tearing up those poems I wrote

the last copies

on earth. Recite the number of teaspoons

of vodka in my veins.    Help me breathe in

and out.

Stop him from saying the right things

from being honest

I need a fable

a landslide     my own Jerry Lee Lewis

Let me be 16 and stupid again.

Let anything feel possible.

Jennifer Miller McIntyre

Cul-De-Sac

I’m going to holler into the darkness

pray someone answers me back

for the road is dark and made

of uneven cobblestone. The needles press against my skin

the hobos glare     children taunt     I walk

alone dropping pieces of skin

dead     mostly but I’m bleeding

tearing away at what can be seen

the epidermis is what causes trouble

dry and wet

cold and warm

sent out into the night.

I’m going to holler into the darkness

hope someone answers

everyone seems dead

or a million miles away.

Words go unanswered.

The SOS is kicked back into beach.

Sleep well into the darkness

I’ll be here     washing and wishing

things weren’t stacked so tall

things weren’t falling apart

I gave away all of my thread

the needles are under my skin

     a saw to check for my life

sifting and unable

to catch light.

Jennifer Taylor

When Looking at the Columbia River is Like Listening to God

I thought of suffocation

I thought of sebaceous oil and dirt in pores

And how last night you said
I broke you

It was the most truthful
phrase you had said in years

one axiom I could
believe because

I myself had thought it true
for years

Felt the cracking
these clicks inside me

severed moments
where I no longer told myself

There, there now
But instead said

Ok, then
and felt the fissures

the truth packed down
the air kicked out

So, along I-84
as my eyes flitted with exhaustion
and my lungs asked for air

I thought of oil and dirt in pores

I thought of suffocation

The Goddess and Her Ram

According to the stars
we only had a 50/50 chance of surviving
so I count it as a miracle
that we lasted this long. Perhaps the fire in you
could no longer stand
the dirty virgin of me and just set fire
to the whole thing
screaming     just stay.

I took a cue from you
and lit a match, but sinking it
into soil never made a blaze. You attained 
no bonfire in my perceived failure, only smoke. 
Your coward of a wheat harvest mistress 
is about small symbols of methodology
of waiting for the elements
to mate.

You lit your own match.
Your wild curled horns shone 
in the light
and in your blue irises.
The shed of potting soils and tools
ignited as you vomited up kerosene to feed
the slow determined waves
your back rolling
the flames growing large
over the smolder between my legs
the matchbook
between my teeth.

When you had finished heaving
the sirens coming in the wake
I wanted to hover over the clover
and take the burn instead but
my toes hooked in the soil.
I walked steady
hand lying open the fence with a howl
never looking from a Southward
direction. I let the matchbook
fall where it may.

Jennifer Miller McIntyre

She Cannot Get

She cannot get

this close to the fire.

She wants to wander the edge of your blade

and run it down her arm

like she did the scissors

when disowned by her sister.

In her mother’s bathroom

she cried, hoped to pass out

or submerge the edge.

But she couldn’t let the blood come

a mother

with a liturgical life long

job to be present for the multitude of cells 
that turned into her child.

Her wrists are volleyballs for saints 

walking tightropes of dirty needles in twine.

No one is going to love her

like her father does.

Paned windows cut through her in Paris–

saints in colored glass, Jesus’ crown of thorns.

Held against the chest of her faith when she looks forward

is the thought: no one wants to hear these things. How

she wants to depart but can’t. How she lives

and the way it blisters.

Don’t talk to her about your desire

the way you should have been

the things you should have said.

You are refuse

blowing in the breeze

on the Rue du Chevalier

that blew up her dress

and went on your merry way.

Jennifer Miller McIntyre

Hymn, "It Is Well With My Soul"

"When peace, like a river, attendeth my way, When sorrows like sea billows roll; Whatever my lot, Thou has taught me to say, It is well, it is well, with my soul."