Five Poems, by Brett Elizabeth Jenkins
1:26
And I can’t concentrate on anything except
how green your face looks, illuminated
by the light from the dashboard numbers, and how
lonely the talk radio always sounds at such an hour.
And I know right now that we’re
not going to make it—how unpainful a process
it will be to retrieve my things from your house,
to give back the ring and some socks you’ve left.
Love Me Here
Take a left at that big tree, then
another after Mr. Jameson’s old barn, now
abandoned, but which had so many first
greenings, lilacs.
Stop here. Touch my hair
under these late blossoming trees
where Jason used to get beat up.
Then drive
past the cemetery, past
the retirement home.
Help me step from the car here
on this mound of dirt where my childhood
home burned.
Where no more families made
Christmas breakfast, no children climbed
into bed with their parents.
Genesis
The order, you see, is the wrong part.
Everything else happened more or less
the way they say. In the beginning
there were words. And the words made the light;
light made man, and that man made a mess.
God, in his illimitable grace
and mercy, turned himself into dust
and threw himself up over the mess
like a tarp and made darkness. And then
he made a sad village out of dirt
and dreams, and he named her Israel.
And Israel undressed herself like
the trees are known now to do, and She
forsook her God, the way the leaves of
those trees are known now to do. And God
continued to be dust, and kept watch.
He slept there, in the night sky, over
the men, the women, which unmade him.
Eighty-five Degrees
October is burning this year
the leaves fall fast and fiery
red like autumn snowflakes
it darkens
crickets again
they hush with the crunch
those dying leaves beneath our bodies
lamps are out in the house
enveloped in night we don’t talk
we cover ourselves in leaves
without signaling to each other
this is what we should do
we simply know
i’m swept to sleep
under the leaf blanket
only waking when i feel your lips
on my forehead
while the crickets unchain themselves
song of legs rubbing leg
July
Even the crickets have become weary.
Heat lightning opening the dark corners
of the room. The fields thunder idly outside.
This feeling I’m having without you leaves me
with nothing. What this heat would feel like
with you in it, unstitching yourself
inside me. How long would it take you
to make my voice well up?
