Jennifer Reeser



Jennifer Reeser was born in 1968.  Her poems, translations, criticism and fiction have appeared or will appear in U.S., British and Internet journals such as Blue Unicorn, The New Laurel Review, The Lyric, Louisiana Literature, The Edge City Review, PIVOT, Cumberland Poetry Review, Disquieting Muses, The Alsop Review, Able Muse and Expansive Poetry & Music Online.  In addition to having work included in the forthcoming Rising Phoenix, an anthology of Generation X Expansivist poets, her collection An Alabaster Flask is the winner of the Word Press 2002 First Book Prize, and is scheduled for release in 2003.  She has received a nomination for the Pushcart, the Innovative Form Award from The World Order Of Narrative & Formalist Poets, and an award from Iambs & Trochees. She lives in southern Louisiana with her husband Jason and their five children.  We also recommend that you click here to visit Jennifer's web site.



Compass Rose

I'd buy you a Babushka doll, my heart,
and brush your ash-blonde hair until it gleams,
were Russia and our land not laid apart
by ocean so much deeper than it seems.

I have an oval pin, though—glossy lacquer
hand-made in Moscow, after glasnost came,
with fine, deft roses on a background blacker
perhaps, than history's collective shame.

I've done my best to compass you with roses:
the tablecloth, the walls, the pillowcase,
the western side-yard only dusk discloses
briefly, in Climbing Blaze and Queen Anne's lace.

May they suffice for peace when you discover
your love is not enough to turn the earth.
I dream I saw a handful of them hover
against my pane the morning of your birth.

Published in Iambs & Trochees



To Hold Dawn

The day circles her lilies, and twines
up the wreathing barks of her trees;
morning stretches through frosting on slender new vines
as I touch you, another time, on waking's knees,
while the dew mote lifts,
and the breeze.
These smooth, silver joints of lifetime's news
bend easily now in our decade's flex—
and if I were alone, once again, I would choose
to choose you where evening and promise connect,
where strength's strong
and direct.
I've watched you, in the heart of dark, of hush,
your hands free from all sharpness of the living knife,
wishing that innocence could forever brush
against every expression in your convex life,
to strain the dim
and strife.
I've seen your eyes sleep; it looked as though
their lids were soft blinds my fingers drew,
obscuring the shades of the landscape, 'To Know,'
but obscuring, also, their winking, their blue,
and shrinking sight
as dreaming grew.
I've wished, in the vacuum of a silent thought,
that the bath of time could scour sorrow,
hoping the water running seconds have brought
could wash us together in pure tomorrow—
to buy our joys, not borrow—
could rinse the ceaseless band of anxieties clean,
washing through frailty to diurnal white.
My idea is no more than a bursting seam,
but for this moment's blink, it holds, in spite
of stubborn sun
and light.

Published in The Lyric



Proper Creole Farewells

He said I had to teach him our goodbye
following that long silence parting brings,
then let his coffee steam against the air.
Career, it was, to look at him— but why
should two blue eyes be such off-limit things,
and differences breed inconsequence?
The city seemed to me no more aware
of our resplendent history than I
lamented what lay waiting in its wings;
but, after midnight, words and love both share
the latitude to be relieved of tense,
and, shining on the terraces— though dim—
stood streetlamps destined to confound me, since
their light could never cede the sight of him.

Published in The Louisiana Review



For A Friend Gone Mute

I cannot know what reason now incites
your silence—but while I await some fall
of correspondent tenor, I recall
your laughter in the old New Orleans rites,
the complement of silken attitude
which inclined me to call you friend that day.
An open shop beside the Vieux Carre`
still holds me in a fleeting latitude
you placed there, turning spritely in a dress
of black and beadwork.  There was no ring
of jazz blown through the Quarter on a wind—
the cobblestones were paused, as if to guess
your steps—and then, as now, no birds to sing
as if best love were that heard by a friend.

Published in Tucumcari Literary Review



Tempted to doubt your love...

Tempted to doubt your love, I wept at last,
and flirted with the pleasures of despair,
exulted in the insults of the past,
then touched the newest silver in my hair,
finally pleased with your neglectful days,
affording, as they do, my chance to muse
so much the more on those incumbent ways
I dream you’d die for me, by bit or bruise.
Your silence will not wound me, and the words
of malice you might use are better spent
dissuading ardor from the bees and birds,
since whether or not you speak, I am content,
detecting in my circumstance a tinge
of something like the sweetness in revenge.

Published in The Lyric



I've Been Pondering Eternity Again

While I was still a child, at night I lay
in stillness on my bed, stubborn to see
the farthest vestige of eternity
until within my mind, day piled on day,
each second piled thereafter, soon gave way
to such a paralyzing fear in me,
I'd countermand those thoughts impatiently—
knowing, (in time), forever couldn't stay.
By seeking paradigms outside their moment,
I'd tried to force forever to successions
of hours, as children might mistake atonement
for nothing more than sorry introspections,
then turned my bedside candle off to sleep,
with full faith that its lightlessness would keep.

Published in Troubadour



Souvenir  

So many mornings I awoke in tears
from one more dream of crying at her grave,
but she was always there, secure and strong,
perfumed with talc, or Oriental spice,
with perfect words and comfort cold as ice—
the only love I ever held too long.

Published in Iambs & Trochees, reprinted in Poet's Market, 2003



Sonnet for Maxim

I dreamed his death, where all his tiny limbs—
surrendered underneath a window ledge
to war I neither loved nor knew by name—
lay so far from those lullabies and hymns
I longed to sing him one last time in pledge,
that distance, in itself, turned into dream.
To touch his face and innocence became
my sole necessities, my only whims,
till, just as he unfolded at the edge
of reach, my own sobs woke me with the shame
of grief, and more: that, in the global scheme,
he craved such little space in which to die.
But most: that, after battle, it would seem
no one—no one—would glance at him, or cry.

Published in PIVOT