Tag: Jessica Fisher

by Jessica Fisher

I woke to find

that I’d forgotten

what it was for

a deceptively

simple tool

as if for stripping

the skin away or

emptying the insides

of the thing while

leaving the shell intact

as if an egg

without white or yolk

strung on a filament

signifying birth

or rebirth

but empty—

it was one or the other

I was certain

as I lay in the dark room

sunslats marking

the wall with Morse

but to flay or

disembowel

I wasn’t sure anymore

2

day as an erasure of thought, a wind-filled

covenant, light on rock, rock on rock on earth

so early born it was a wonder that we could

speak of it to one another at all, too tired even

for coffee and lost as we tried to find our way

to the grocery store and barber, we were hopeless

and filled with such hope, you see we wanted

to find our way, to cook in the strange vessels

and swim underwater with our eyes wide, oh

god there was nothing we wouldn’t do to see

from Poetry Northwest 08.2 Fall & Winter 2013-2014More by Jessica Fisher from the library

Copyright © Jessica Fisher
Used with the permission of the author
on behalf of Poetry Northwest.

by Jessica Fisher

I gave birth to the king’s daughter

To the golden egg

To the promise of rain

To the alphabet’s silence

Behind that rain-slicked window

Something fogged the glass

That was me

Pleased to meet you

*

Rain and the flash of sun

A sudden blindness

Stitched into the retina

Whose shadow did I see

Running over the bleached grass

The blush of sunrise sinking

*

Balm for what woe

Was woe betide

Your one body

And the sun behind

The light’s to-do

The rain’s undone

Was the refrain

Refrained

Did you damp

Down the sun

from Poetry Northwest 08.2 Fall & Winter 2013-2014More by Jessica Fisher from the library

Copyright © Jessica Fisher
Used with the permission of the author
on behalf of Poetry Northwest.