Author Archives: Jenny

  And maybe I’ll go back someday and stand in the shadow of the crab apple tree, look up at the window of the old apartment, stand under the leaves until my old neighbor Rose emerges with her cane, her … Read More

  A wife a mother a moth her   wings whaling against the kitchen window.   He loves her which is why he builds   two knotted shutters that close   with a hook through the eye.

  You young men, you guns and shovels digging your perfect country in the loam,   you do not yet know what it is to cluster, to break along a longer vein,   to feel all the many pieces of … Read More

  She did not want me to see her riding her sad whales           through the green waves. She told me this as I helped her sop up the mess. The bath tub had overflowed again. … Read More

  The dog’s bark slips through the wall of the house—a large dog, I can tell, and lonely.   Maybe she turns in circles on her rug. Maybe she settles and sleeps.   Out here, rain begins to darken the … Read More

  (Natural History Museum)                                                                 Since all I recall of eighth-grade Biology       is the fleshy balloon of Mr. Manfree’s face, and the gelatinous, white-bellied bodies         we divided, I take my family to … Read More

  are all black & blue & red. Spread out. Coloring the sofa, the ottoman, the living room floor. He worries you will step   on them. Interrupt their destination or perfect parking. Before he could speak he would hold … Read More

  a blacksnake crossed the gravel in the afternoon, moving from one field to the other, undulant across the road and eventually ending. The earth, when dust under its muscles, took the pattern   of its flesh, its spine unlike … Read More

  June 2014   1   A day they said   my mother just mayfly life   rush fly drive ten years ago through just-   greened trees bleeding hearts by the door to the door   to her last bed   days   … Read More

  A sidewalk begins to spot, then the odor of wet canvas comes, and peat. Oils on the surfaces of rocks are released. Papers, piled near window sills or screens, dampen into waves. We are, all of us, solitaries, sheltered … Read More