All Poems
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Elizabeth Leaves A Letter For Dr. Frankenstein
© Jennifer Reeser
Whether the clouds had abandoned Geneva that evening
no one can say now, but what I remember are roses
bruised at their edges, and china cups yellowed with age.
I am too sick of interior vapors, I told you,
Sapphics For Celebrity
© Jennifer Reeser
In my dream, Celebrity, four pianos
scored the room, and you -- on an antique sofa
near two dark-haired innocents -- asked that I play
something immortal.
Good Friday 2001, Riding North
© Jennifer Reeser
Yellow makes a play for green among
the rows of some poor farmer's field outside
the Memphis city limits' northern edge.
A D. J. plays The Day He Wore My Crown,
By This Pitch And Motion
© Jennifer Reeser
In the upstairs hallway, complacent sunlight
stings the walls with gold and translucent almond
over Turkish runners betraying patterns
faded with travel.
Miscarriage
© Jennifer Reeser
Fold this, our daughters grave,
and seal it with your kiss.
For all the love I gave,
you owe me this.
Renunciation
© Jennifer Reeser
Its a jade branch on the floor, broken in two, love,
or a stain raised on the lapped grains of a suede glove.Its the lace, blown by a strong breeze, of an old gown
with the cranes crying at night, lost in their long sound.Its a vase made from the noon light in a closed place,
and it falls, shatters the sharp edge of a jewel case.Its the Muse, mute with a shell clenched in her left hand,
Imagining youd come to say goodbye...
© Jennifer Reeser
Imagining youd come to say goodbye,
I made a doll of raffia and string.
I gave her thatch hair, and a broomstick skirt
of patchwork satin rags. Around each eye
Civilization
© Jennifer Reeser
Send your army home to their wives and children.
It is late. Your soldiers are burdened, thirsty.
Lock the doors, the windows, and here in darkness
lie down beside me.
Should You Ask At Midnight
© Jennifer Reeser
What would I do without your voice to wake me?
Cor ad cor loquitur, Im loath to know.
Kitsch operas sound, unhesitant to shake me,
The sheers undrawn, the heavens hardly showing,
Civic Centre (for Kathryn)
© Jennifer Reeser
And everywhere, the audience defies
convention and conformity, some dressed
as though they had been made to improvise
at the last minute, some in black-tie best.
This Night Slip, In His Honor (after Komachi)
© Jennifer Reeser
This night slip, in his honor
flipped inside out of lace-
edged netting is the color
of Shaka Zulus face;
Leaning Over Eros
© Jennifer Reeser
She recognizes him at last as Other,
not Self. I see her in my mind, hot wax
about to plummet from the lifted candle.
Should closeness be so vulnerable to fact?
French Quarter Singer
© Jennifer Reeser
Strumming your polished guitar with long, nail-lightened fingers,
where are you now, leaning forward a peasant-dressed arm
lark on the near side of midnight, my crescent curb lady,
ear to your sound, dangling each with a silver folk charm?
Blue-Crested Cry
© Jennifer Reeser
Were through, were through, were through, were through, were through
and flanking, now, the edges of our schism
it seems your coldness and my idealism
alone for all this time have kept us true.
The Garden
© Alfred Tennyson
She is coming, my own, my sweet;
Were it ever so airy a tread,
My heart would hear her and beat,
Were it earth in an earthy bed;
Wednesday
© Marvin Bell
Gray rainwater lay on the grass in the late afternoon.
The carp lay on the bottom, resting, while dusk took shape
in the form of the first stirrings of his hunger,
and the trees, shorter and heavier, breathed heavily upward.
These Green-Going-to-Yellow
© Marvin Bell
This year,
I'm raising the emotional ante,
putting my face
in the leaves to be stepped on,
The Self and the Mulberry
© Marvin Bell
I wanted to see the self, so I looked at the mulberry.
It had no trouble accepting its limits,
yet defining and redefining a small area
so that any shape was possible, any movement.
