A Mother's Advice to her Children

Selected Poem from What Remains (Turkey Buzzard Press, 2016).

If you ever get the chance, live with an artist.

Live with an artist and you begin to notice

the shapes of things. 

Even the air around the enormous

sprig of forsythia

in the beer bottle,

the way its presence

makes the room fade away,

its relationship with the white wall,

its simple canvas.

Live with an artist and expect food

to slow cook all day

just for the odors of chiles,

the moisture in the kitchen

the falling apart of the meat inside the pot.

You needn't gather the cats.  They will find you.

Move in with an artist at least once.

Plant plenty of daffodils,

whatever you can afford. 

And study the light

all day and in every season

before you decide to do

much else.

Live with an artist. 

Stay as long as you can. 

Leave if you must, then live with

an accountant.

Third Place, The Colorado Lawyer Poetry Contest, 2006.

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A POEM FROM THE BOOK WHAT REMAINS

Restraining Order

Selected Poem from What Remains (Turkey Buzzard Press, 2016).

I am watching the freckles

on the back of my fingers

multiply and divide like

lovers under the lens.  The

speaker at my podium

says:  He's my pimp.  Tore

a branch from a tree.   Beat

me.  The branch broke.

I am lifting the law books

down, a  browning obsolete

boulder older than I am,

the weight of a witness

of losses.  The letters of the

law chew on my fingernails,

and now she is saying:

Choked me  . . .  can't

remember the rest.

I am skin closed in

this chair in this black cloth

swallowing more water these days

staying tempered, staying cool,

a surgeon dusting her hands

for powder burns, and suddenly

I look at her, wide-eyed, broken: 

He shouted he'd

kill me.  I don't know if he will.

I am blotting the battered  bench

with a clawed Kleenex, aligning my

pencils just so.  She says justice.  She says

justice.  She says:  He dragged me by my hair. 

My head broke the mirror. 

Do you need to see the pictures? 

First Place, The Colorado Lawyer Poetry Contest, 2006.

---

A POEM FROM THE BOOK WHAT REMAINS.

Autumn in Five Parts

Selected Poem from What Remains (Turkey Buzzard Press, 2016) published in Colorado Women News July 1993 and Montelibre, 1993.

In early autumn, sunny gusts signal a shift,

            the kind of mystery neighborhood crows warn about.

In the garden, the last zucchini lies down with the cucumber,

            under an enormous frond. 

In its corner, the pumpkin drinks and fattens, drinks and fattens,

            While hailstones pock its holes of memory.

Seeds of armyworms under curled leaves of baby kale

            carry more futures than remains. 

2.

Across the street, my neighbor cranks a long piece of metal

            under the hood of his pickup. 

For years, he’s never spoken or waved or made eye contact,

            except last January first, when he was shoveling snow.

At the moment he stood to catch his breath, I shouted

            Happy New Year and he lifted his hand, kept shoveling.   

This time, sunlight catches a long filament flying

            from the eave of his house.  Now is time for serious work.

3.

Drops of water light on silvery cobwebs stretched across mushrooms

             to blades of grass to mushrooms to blades of grass. 

A slow bee probes the yellow mum in the terracotta planter

            just the size and shape of a rabbit. The wind rises. 

My mind rakes the ground under the tall ash while the leaves

            continue to fall one by one, as we do.

 A single crow slides in and out of view. 

4.

How like spiders we are, we aging ladies refusing to go gently,

            grabbing at the forearms of our bossy daughters,

We smile at the neighbors and stomp our feet at doctors,

We are planning our escapes—one will take a bus

            to Dallas and see what happens.                        

One will find the now grown child lost so many years ago,

            and one of us thinks she will stay put. 

5.

Last week, the tangle of planet, sun, and the evenness of days

            Aligned as they should.  Now they begin to unravel. 

Yesterday when I opened the garage to grab the rake,

            a six-sided spider web filled the doorway .

When I stepped in, the web snapped.  I felt the force of it

            against my forehead. 

I heard the sound of the trap.

---

A POEM FROM THE BOOK:

What Remains

$15.00

In 2016 Jacqueline’s first book of poems, What Remains, was published by Turkey Buzzard Press.

"I believe in the power of poetry lies in its play of time and memory with music and meaning. . . Who are we? we ask, and scraps of experience rain down."

(Photo credit: Peter Bryson, Nooknose.com)

(Price includes domestic shipping and taxes, if applicable.)

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Quincentenary Poem: Civic Center Park, 1992

Selected Poems from What Remains (Turkey Buzzard Press, 2016) published in Colorado Women News July 1993 and Montelibre, 1993.

One by one they circle the park,
Eagles facing east from
Courthouse columns
Capitol dome
Museum fortress
The glass rectangular offices of industry.

These are the closed edges of architecture,
This law, this art,
This swallowed literature,
The politics that burn
This island of seeds laid out like tiles On which we march. 

It's another turn of another century,
stage-blood covers the globe,
Stains the pool of buildings
And the books of bones

That do not burn

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A POEM FROM THE BOOK WHAT REMAINS.

Poetry Is An Act of Love

Selected Poem from What Remains (Turkey Buzzard Press, 2016).

To love a country is to know its poets.

Is there the soul of a human being in there?

Pure uncertainty yearns in a minor key.

Going out to get a poem is like hunting.

Is there the soul of a human being in there?

Miles said: Don’t play what you know, play what you hear.

Going out to get a poem is like hunting.

It is what the mind takes hold of.

Don’t play what you know, play what you hear.

It is what the mind takes hold of.

To love a country is to know its poets.

As if poetry were an act of love.

---

A POEM FROM THE BOOK WHAT REMAINS.