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November 25, 2019 Poetry

two poems

Jenny Mary Brown

two poems photo

Silos and Lip Gloss

We lie on the floor of your living room.
You push up to your elbow and stretch your legs.

I, on my stomach, breathe deep into hard wood.
Blissed out like teens we are drunk on gin, salt. 

Olive juice still on our gums, we are imps in summer—
You drum out a beat on the floor in front of you.

Like pizza or lip gloss or bursting bubbles in a Coke can, 
Vermont from the floor is a glittering wrapped gift

on a tightrope made of tinsel and singing wind chimes
in my dream.  Or, if made real, like that time Joe poured us

Bordeaux in a basement bar on Lafayette St., or ten AM
on that February Sunday when we stole half a skating rink

to practice standing and gliding for a trip on your birthday.
We are children just home from playing, we are silos on a hill, 

empty of grain and ready for ground burrs—
We are foals in spring as we struggle to our feet.


Secret Seconds: A Point Reflection

In our enacted mirror universe, 
we sneak off together, around the corner, 

to Pizzeria Ida. After waving off friends, 
hugging like we're all departing, 

we step out of the Audi we just stepped in.
Leaving our dinner party, we reset

the clock: arrange symmetric matter, 
will our bellies empty, dissolve

neutrons into protons. We wait
while I re-apply red lipstick.

Magnetic fields reconstitute. High energy 
rays excite for the moment. We alone 

are allowed through, to begin again. 
Renewed, revived, we get re-fills of water,

go from outside to in, cool to warm,
plastic plates swap out for ceramic.

The transition is not easy. Astronauts
often feel dizzy from G-force on re-entry, 

their thoughts splayed like loops 
of electric current in a space vector.

We are organic matter, fermions
and bosons, both in reflection and not.

My face flushes next to the blue oven,
but his lights like volcanic embers,

capillaries twisting over each other,
steaming into water-dense andosol.

 

image: Aaron Burch


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