by Jennifer R. Edwards
are the best to hold onto. They keep you, too. Patina an aura of
association from acidic memory. I relish meaning too much & salvage
sunken relics. Give them small powers; thinking they give it to me.
The deer, which are really our departed dogs, return. Want circles back
blurry & breathtaking. Happiness is a topographical map I manage & mangle
& maintain. Spread open it’s severe & confusing & blinding (no, boring)
with simple details. Are additional arrangements of the ordinary necessary?
Once, I knew leaving in every direction. Now I visit the heart’s secure stations;
the rush & release more mental than mechanical. I didn’t mean to be ignorantly
cyclical & sequential. There was a succession of events I possibly slept through.
I wanted to be liquid, lunar, nearly naked in my honesty (to myself). We are
dramatic blooms of jellyfish; currents give illusions of effort. Desire’s cost is cryptic
but not catastrophic. We can’t both be completely visible at one time. If this is a stage,
let’s ignore the leering curtain. Come back to bed. Taste the salty ocean that raised us.
Kindness is currency. Our life is a mortgage of epic proportions. We spend every
day saving. Our mantels are heavy. We don’t fault the moon her pockmarks. We
don’t need details for how wrinkled foreheads become ruminant racks. Come feel
my artifacts. Here is what I thought we needed. Here is where we keep it.
Jennifer R. Edwards’ debut collection, Unsymmetrical Body (Finishing Line Press, 2022), recently received a 2023 Eric Hoffer Honorable Mention Poetry and was a First Horizon Finalist. Her Pushcart Prize nominated poetry has won (2022) and been honorably mentioned for the New England Poetry Club Amy Lowell Prize. Her poems appear in anthologies and literary magazines including Mom Egg Review, One Art, Gyroscope Review, Passengers Journal, Terrain, Literary Mama, Snapdragon, Tiny Spoon, and The Racket. She’s an educator and preschool speech-language pathologist in Concord, NH, residing with her family and pug. See her work and get in touch at Linktree, Twitter, Instagram, or PW.org.
Emerge Literary Journal 