[WHEN SUNLIGHT BECOMES AN OBJECT]
When sunlight becomes an object, my echo creates a hole in sound:
a thousand doors, many handshakes of air.
Like the snapping hazel flings its yellows into the woods,
my coming and going is marked in the ear of the hearer.
When the hazel dormouse hides, she hides for months at a time.
It’s the grip of an unknown animal she fears.
But fear’s a tricky thing; at night she shreds the honeysuckle
and builds nests in the crooks of open trees.
If the big-eared bat can sing, then I was that supersonic love song.
Swinging from crag to crag, I was that blind crooning animal.
Like Lorca, I want to sleep the dream of apples.
I want the old dangers to feel welcome—
the wind displacing the fir tree, the fir tree catching on fire.
Let something burn long enough, it’ll put itself to sleep.
_______________________________________________________________________
JENNIFER MOORE is the author of the forthcoming collection, The Veronica Maneuver (University of Akron Press, August 2015). Her poems have been published in American Letters & Commentary, Best New Poets, The Volta, Columbia Poetry Review and elsewhere, and criticism in Jacket2 and The Offending Adam. She teaches creative writing and literature at Ohio Northern University and lives in Defiance, Ohio.
_______________________________________________________________________
Read more poems by Jennifer Moore:
Poem at Inter/rupture
Poem at Phantom Limb
Poem at TYPO
You’d sometimes flash your dick /
in bars for wild amusement and strip on stage. /
Jail kept your talent disciplined and quick.
The girl takes the /
umbrella or /
does the umbrella take /
the girl /
lead her out into the wet /
evening and /
touch her softly on the hand
I insulted him. /
He looked like a crazy Italian fish. /
He looked like a sausage lipped piranha. /
He looked like a hitman for the mob /
and I insulted him.
The state is ill; therefore, I am ill. /
....
I am learning the difference between urgency /
and importance.
a petrified man sliding backwards, towards us
in his useless van—the army jeeps
crawling towards refugee camps abandoned
in the storm. We're not here to witness
them.
There are days, says the child, /
when God is not even God, when /
the moon is also not the moon.
They had already sat down on the bed. Then the man remembered the back door was still open.
There was a picture in the paper, front /
page, as if this news was the end of cruelty.
I want to ask her /
about the long veils of widows. /
She’ll just shake her head.
My daughter marches through the forest. She can’t do it herself, so /
she uses my legs, my eyes and my fear.
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Jennifer Moore
Poetry · Tagged: American Letters, american poets, Best New Poets, Columbia Poetry Review, Commentary, contemporary American poetry, Defiance, Jacket2, Jennifer Moore poems, Jennifer Moore poet, Jennifer Moore poetry, Ohio, Ohio Northern University, The Offending Adam, The Veronica Maneuver, The Volta, University of Akron Press, women poets
[WHEN SUNLIGHT BECOMES AN OBJECT]
When sunlight becomes an object, my echo creates a hole in sound:
a thousand doors, many handshakes of air.
Like the snapping hazel flings its yellows into the woods,
my coming and going is marked in the ear of the hearer.
When the hazel dormouse hides, she hides for months at a time.
It’s the grip of an unknown animal she fears.
But fear’s a tricky thing; at night she shreds the honeysuckle
and builds nests in the crooks of open trees.
If the big-eared bat can sing, then I was that supersonic love song.
Swinging from crag to crag, I was that blind crooning animal.
Like Lorca, I want to sleep the dream of apples.
I want the old dangers to feel welcome—
the wind displacing the fir tree, the fir tree catching on fire.
Let something burn long enough, it’ll put itself to sleep.
_______________________________________________________________________
JENNIFER MOORE is the author of the forthcoming collection, The Veronica Maneuver (University of Akron Press, August 2015). Her poems have been published in American Letters & Commentary, Best New Poets, The Volta, Columbia Poetry Review and elsewhere, and criticism in Jacket2 and The Offending Adam. She teaches creative writing and literature at Ohio Northern University and lives in Defiance, Ohio.
_______________________________________________________________________
Read more poems by Jennifer Moore:
Poem at Inter/rupture
Poem at Phantom Limb
Poem at TYPO
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