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."

A Poem Too Good Not To Share

PACKET
by Jamie Ross

A green light that comes
when you never saw it coming, never
heard it, felt it, but you knew it

like the woman in the sandlot
behind Abram's Grill
who's just lost her lenses,
on her hands and knees, her
hair cut short but seems as if
it's flowing, and the rush
on her throat like a rise
from birth, the music in the car

as the engine goes silent
while you fold down a seat
for the stashed beam lantern
with it's yellow plastic grip, six
Ray-O-Vacs, the
movement in the trees
beyond Lake Michigan. It's

a wave like that
when the wind gets lost
and the mail-boat from Racine, three
hours late, cracks into a tanker,
where the crew, like you, has
waited on the decks, in the hold
for two months out, to send

a message home—or to get a
certain scent, for just one instant,
of weeds, in the dirt, the both

of you groping.

Wall Project

Records affixed to the wall with command poster strips.

Records: $.99 per record
Command adhesive: $1.84 per 8 pack.

= $7.64 plus taxes.

I am planning on adding two to four more records. I didn't realize how large the wall was!

Drinking Proximo

I could tell you

what is waiting in the doorway

of concupiscence

but the answer is simple:

nothing.

My body is passing

away into the creak and fall

of pain--

the part where numbness sets in.

I can't feel alive.

The doorway is old

wood has been shaved off

paint peels in splinters

and the texture is rubbing away.

I placed a curtain of black over it today.

A shower of disgrace.

Partly Wired

He didn't know if it was

red or white or yellow

that got the lights working again

that would put the flicker back into her face.

Twisting and stripping wire

so that the current can carry

through walls and into outlets

isn't his day job.

Isn't really

his job at all.

The radio dims in sound

the lights waver

and he jumps back.

Once bitten, twice shy.

Takes the time

to make sure his feet

are firmly planted-

left hand takes blue

right hand takes red

heels seized in boot sole

and go.

Cheryl Dumesnil Poem

This is the poem I received in my email box today from poets.org. I love the meshing of a vulture and mitochondria.

Prayer for Sleep
by Cheryl Dumesnil

The chiropractor sent me home
with my left ankle taped, my neck
cracked, and instructions not to sleep

on my belly, so when it came time
for bed, I dropped a tequila shot,
laid back and closed my lids, entrails

exposed to vultures of bad dreams.
From the neighboring pillow,
my love whispered theories

of meditation, biofeedback, post-
traumatic stress, and prayer. When
she asked, "If a divine creator

made the universe, who made
the divine creator?" I mumbled,
"Are you trying to talk me to sleep?"

She smiled, then babbled
past midnight, contemplating out loud
the metaphysics of leaf production,

the wonder of molecules
that make up our bed, the web
of my cell structure connected

to hers, until I fell asleep,
imagining the mitochondria
of words, thinking, if god is

love, let me sleep to this sound of her voice.

"Like an Empty Restaurant Full of Perfume and Balloons."

Rybicki Evening

Eating salmon with capers, herbed cream cheese

on toasted foccacia bread crested with red wine vinegar

marinated onions on a plate, rimmed in gold

water in a goblet, two forks, a napkin in the lap

then, to the bus station, to find a way back,

traversing the flat, black sea with someone learning to compose music

or so says the idiot’s guide in his hands or the man talking incessantly

about someone’s anger. Looking out the city is dark and wet for this evening

no longer smells like home

the rhythm of the city has changed–

it lassoed lights and smells it found in magazines

made a priority of miscellany or perhaps,

this mediocre nose and eyes have developed with the woman

layered under fleece and her father’s sweatshirt,

plodding along,

lost in a tidal wave of revelations and language

tireless when hunted.

Jennifer Miller McIntyre

A Surrealist Exercise

Stage Left Bank

Seeing elephants made of clay

as you drive to teach youth

can never be a good sign

lights rise

men in distinguished hats rarely dance

Quick

moving boxes filled with spaghetti

curtains part

a woman sings a shrill note that goes from G to E

and back, no Bach, no concerto, just her sliding note

in the key of grass

Applause

Silence

A small dog timidly peeks out

a clay elephant in his mouth

forty-two teeth marks and a missing leg

A small boy runs in

thud of footfall

gives the dog a fedora to wear

placing it between the ears

then screaming one single note

the boy pogo jumps away

The play had never begun

Jennifer Miller McIntyre