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.
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.
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.
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.
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