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Guest Poet Jessie Day


Bruises


A purple peach
Pressed to her eye
She retrieved an ice pack
Drank the melting water

And climbed into her truck watching the rubber windshield wipers
As they drank from the sky
Her eye thumped
Beneath notable shades

A piece of her nail
Stuck in her tooth
And a piece of hair was pulled to search for the obsession
Beneath the gum line

She went to suck her diamond ring
But it had melted in the rain
She climbed from her truck
And walked a gravel path

Retrieving a morbid sentiment from a throbbing head:
“The winter trees are dying”
Picking a cherry blossom to whisper:
“The chimes of spring”

She knocked on his door
And entered the tired room with its dust
Handing over her spring, to the thing that made her old
She crawled to bed and locked the door

May, 2002

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Childhood Fort



Running from shirts and mothers
Calling for an evening bath
We duck into the forest continuing
Taciturn conversations with wax trees

Pressing our tiny nipples to their base
Our laughter chars the pine’s cone

Make the fort from stick worms
We seal it with a beaded pine needle door

Our toes are soaked from our own urine
As we look back to see footprints stuck to the dew carpet

Limbs and feathers erect from the moss
We line our fort with gravestone rocks

We douse paper flowers dyed with yolk centers
To mourn the death of our forest fort


May, 2002



Jessie Day's questions:

I feel like these are repetetive. How could they express more inner emotion?

Are these interesting?

Do you understand what it is that I am trying to say?



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