I would rather run a butter knife
Through Ruskin’s uncut pages
Than under the lip of a stuck tack.
I would rather come under a hand
That’s apt to undo me than be
Buttonholed by a walking dictionary.
from DruthersFind more by Jennifer Moxley at the library
Copyright © 2018 Jennifer Moxley
Used with the permission of Flood Editions.
Cold to the Christmas bluster,
which I believed “all bloated commerce,”
I morning-gazed not half-awake
out the low distorting window panes
scarcely secured in the rotting casements
of this old Sears catalog bungalow.
I was careless of the scene I watched.
It spoke, I thought, a dreary death—
aloft, monotonous cottony white,
below, twig-littered lifeless brown—
before the impending pinch,
a snow-portentous silent stillness
in a maddeningly quiescent landscape.
A thumb of silvery fur ensnared
my visual stupor: it was a mouse
scooting across the perilous ground
that lay between the rustic lean-tos
of brittle nut-brown maple leaves.
Image-gripped, but how to name it,
this will to live in little things?
Upon such monumental nerve
we build and break our wage.
Wholly unaware of me with cup
of tepid tea, well-fed antagonist
needled toward wonderment
by the pertinacious gathering
of this tiny attic resident, who,
apropos my fancy, went about
his fretful setting up of store
while seeming to mutter under
his breath, “a big storm’s coming!”
He was right. Come midnight
and the ribboned pine wreaths
hung upon the wooden doors,
this artless morning theater
was dressed foot-high in drifts
of blue-tinged starlit snow.
from ClampdownFind more by Jennifer Moxley at the library
Copyright © Jennifer Moxley
Used with the permission of Flood Editions.
I’ve written imitations, thought long and deeply
over models, delving into wordscape mysteries,
seeking keys to animate swirls of alternative lives
entombed in the pulp of dead trees, signatures
of once bright insight, a ghastly, ghostly business.
They do not consent to my friendship, and I,
in return, give nothing. I am but a host
these few years on earth. The author’s spirit
in me lives locked up. Can you imagine that?
Erased by this prison illusion, I wander
from task to task, head in a box, a shell-self,
a flat surface in forced three-dimension,
I long to be laid down, reduced, or filled,
to fall on my knees, to plead the return
of the lost benevolence I powerfully suspect
exists, and once saw, I think, but can’t remember.
The senses shrivel up. Leave us be, they cry.
Cups of skin creep over eyes, nose, ears, mouth.
This loathing without recourse is tasteless
love excess, turned sour, inward, sewn up.
Painstaking duty tracery calms the bursting forth,
which is crying, a boxed cat shaking, crazed
by the cramp of no care but kind words.
No, this dampened life-will is no irrational spate,
it is crystal sanity trapped in sad okays,
in especial safety before and after,
in knowing knowledge the soul’s sole sustenance
and knowing all knowledge must be undone.
from ClampdownFind more by Jennifer Moxley at the library
Copyright © Jennifer Moxley
Used with the permission of Flood Editions.
I wrote this happiness myself.
I chose this man, this house, this cat.
I put my shadow twin
upstairs in the leaf of a
mediocre book I thought
never to open again. I felt grateful.
Upstairs there were many
photo albums with gluey pages
and yellowed Mylar in between
which Polaroids had come
unstuck. In them happy children
pitch tents, watch TV,
open presents, and smile before
homemade birthday cakes.
Had I known them? I knew
that I was not missing them
or missing out and thus my heart
was full. But, I thought,
should phosphorus mix
with potassium chlorate
and hit the gaseous air,
this man, this house, this cat,
be lost, what then? They’d join
the many other dead
whose memories I tend.
I cannot miss. My heart is full
and grateful. But, I thought,
while I still could, should
neural plaques and tangles
knot my mind, my heart would
empty and all of this would
cease to be. I could not miss it,
nor even this, my spark.
from DruthersFind more by Jennifer Moxley at the library
Copyright © 2019 Jennifer Moxley
Used with the permission of Flood Editions.
The soaked crow beside the road
has lost his definition. His smooth
bird outline and shiny blue-black
feathers—once used by poets
to describe the color of
their beloved’s hair—
are dulled and dripping. He seems
attired in unkempt fur, wooly.
Like a yak. His stick legs gingerly
step beneath him through a muddy
puddle. The surrounding neon grass
plays its role as the gatekeeper
of the busy college road, lying
obedient before the digital clock
in the yard of the national bank’s
prim and well-kept local branch.
from The Open SecretFind more by Jennifer Moxley at the library
Copyright © 2014 Jennifer Moxley
Used with the permission of Flood Editions.
How lovely it is not to go. To suddenly take ill.
Not seriously ill, just a little under the weather.
To feel slightly peaked, indisposed. Plagued by
a vague ache, or a slight inexplicable chill.
Perhaps such pleasures are denied
to those who never feel obliged. If there are such.
How pleasant to convey your regrets. To feel sincerely
sorry, but secretly pleased to send them on their way
without you. To entrust your good wishes to others.
To spare the equivocal its inevitable rise.
How nice not to hope that something will happen,
but to lay on the couch with a book, hoping that
nothing will. To hear the wood creak and to think.
It is lovely to stay without wanting to leave.
How delicious not to care how you look,
clean and uncombed in the sheets. To sip
brisk mineral water, to take small bites
off crisp Saltines. To leave some on the plate.
To fear no repercussions. Nor dodge
the unkind person you bug.
Even the caretaker has gone to the party.
If you want something you will have to
get it yourself. The blue of the room seduces.
The cars of the occupied sound the wet road.
You indulge in a moment of sadness, make
a frown at the notion you won’t be missed.
This is what it is. You have opted to be
forgotten so that your thoughts might live.
from The Open SecretFind more by Jennifer Moxley at the library
Copyright © 2014 Jennifer Moxley
Used with the permission of Flood Editions.
