Sample Poems by Jennifer Reeser
Winter-proof
Blessed be the winter-proof blossoms—
sweet pea, calendula, pink:
nothing in them of corruption,
nothing of fester or stink.
Drawing my gaze from the graveyard—
violet, camellia and rose.
Blessed be the winter-proof blossoms.
I am indebted to those.
Between Gains
All losses, how I hate them all—the child
whose newness I will never touch again;
the sky retreating late with perfumed rain
in gusts of gold, like royalty exiled;
the slaughter of the sweetest of the wild
without regard for their restraint or pain;
the reminiscence of some bare terrain
whose grasses once grew high, green, undefiled.
Today, I turned to share another word
with you, about a more condemning loss,
and ask if you would whisk the thing away,
but stopped before my question could be heard
because I knew—before the thought—it was
my loss of you, and you weren’t there to say.
First Communion
A travelling evangelist came to town
the year she reached the wicked age of ten,
the year her father and her mother vowed
never to share a common hearth again.
A sometime-friend abandoned by her husband
took her to see the holy man’s arrival—
a recent convert into true religion,
and tender toward the smallest church revival.
Between two rows of walnut-finished pews,
he bellowed from a gold, shag-carpet aisle
to every beaten faithful the Good News,
as though it had become the extra mile,
“Cast all your cares on Him, because He cares...”
The late-night hour, completion of his task,
and all attentions spent, he offered prayers
and prophet’s hands on any who would ask.
She watched them at the altar, watched them fall
like pliant dominoes beneath the voice
of one who spoke the tongues of men and all
the angel armies. And she made her choice.
The consequence of treason in each pace,
she swore she wouldn’t fall; then, like the lame
Judean, walked the aisle, until his face
loomed over, and she whispered up her name.
His eyes were kind; for once, she wasn’t frightened
of men or visions, spirit-rooms or Hell.
The light within the sanctuary lightened.
He touched her with a murmur, and she fell.
Cameo
She shunned the world behind pearl-agate sheers,
and they had become her reason to hang on—
the slight, pink light behind the crewel-work bleared
when the flowered outer draperies were drawn.
Despondent at her limitations—pride
not least among those limits—with a look
of bark, it must have seemed from the outside,
she rose towards the ornamental hook,
against the windowpane.
Were this a tale
written in troubled times, of knight and fairy,
the biscuits in the pantry would be stale,
the poultry spoiled, milk souring in the dairy,
and cake only a wish.
But there was much
to thank the heavens over: cask and tin
of candied yams, Swiss toffees in the hutch,
bananas hung aloft with onion skin,
and such and such, et cetera, so forth.
A hammer pounded steadily in the street.
A storm had been predicted from the North.
A twitter issued from the parakeet.
The necessary errands called. They spoke
of kitchen lists and cribs, domestic dread
whose rightness she was learning to evoke
with patience—patience practiced, not inbred.
If anything, she longed to know the name,
identify the trilling, foot, craw, feather,
of every bird beyond the window frame,
and with this knowledge—woven well together
with care—unite the two in time to feeling:
a little music, bit of science, down.
Once it was principle she found appealing,
but now it was the body: throat and crown
of blue or teal or cardinal, along
with joy in the preciseness of the skill
involved in turning wildness into song—
song strong enough to pierce the windowsill.
The previous night had left her with a legion
of scenes—a Phoenix circling in the sky,
to drop its near wing on the lower region
of Earth, into a pool, without a cry,
and with this—to a whirlpool—sprays of dung
like leaden fire, the upcurled talon-hoof
terrible, pure…
Betrayed at last by none,
she listened to the rain splash from the roof
into the cornices, seep into the seals
against the creaking of the humdrum fan.
To be alone with semi-clear ideals
was more than should be meant for any man.