Often whimsical, sometimes disturbing–occasionally both at once–these poems revel in language and image and myth. Whether pausing over the moment of a goldfish’s passing, speculating on the contents of a goddess’s wallet, testing the sharp edges of memory or exploring the significance of skin, the poems in this unique collection find the odd in the ordinary and the luminous in the lost.
Watch out. The sting is in the tail.
Jean’s poems are stunning collages made of stories that sidle up to one another–jostle, shock and spill treasure. This is her first run at the moon, and I’m already breathless–may there be more!
Michelle Tocher, creator of Wonderlit
Here are two poems from the collection …
Lost Youth
A blush-pink dress so
short on colt legs that
white cotton underpants
giggle as the K-Mart heart
on the tinsel chain
glitters goodbye
You can’t leave
the house in just a
blouse, the
father bellows
but she does
clicking down
stone steps on
mile-high heels
A memory
of a blush-pink dress
like a rip of fabric
snagged on a twig
the sole clue
when someone has
disappeared so
deep into
the underbrush
only the search dogs
hear the howl
The Secret
Some people keep a scrapbook
I keep mouse bones
in a metal box
under a floorboard
It creaks of a tiny life
Sometimes I lay its bones
on a red velvet cloth, the
thimble skull, filament limbs
a spine so articulate it could
squeeze through a pore
The bones wince when
they go back in the box
On long nights I wonder
if it pulls itself together
in the breathless dark
and clink-dances tin
dreams of loose slats
and sugar