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Jennifer C. Manion Floating World Though you see my spy
throat Where others see a bed Of leaves and moss, a
deer’s ear Chrysanthemums left to
illumine The monk’s cell You wait and go No further, the way I hold water in my
mouth Pretend to swallow You see My spy throat, not Just wing but Hawk’s beak and snare Nestled in its silk
pouch Hand, wristed, not Just this sleeve’s Drapery Yet You wait and see How the water moves
down My throat, tell me Wait and go No further, we two Will drink once more Before we put up Our hair, take up Our fans Flowers in everyone’s
hands We hold the invitation Minutely. Back
door. Come in. Back down. Wish for a longer life
stinging around her neck. We suspect a nemesis. We say what's my middle name, what was your word for me. We are back, say back
right now, say a child is a balm is a bee. Azalea. Mutation of buttons
and heirlooms. She says we run too
absent, says some lose their leaves while The small varieties
stay ever green. Not Caused by Anything
in This World We have a lot of
really abstract emotions, not caused by anything in this world… You can wake up in the
morning and you are happy. Extraordinarily happy with no traceable
cause.
—Agnes Martin, painter This is the leaning of
sunlight she thinks
the weather has flung up its dress
accepting a sweet start This is what is
spoon-fed fondly what is a future
feather something swimming
beneath a hanging chance she thinks
like a broken halter When she went
round-the-world landing in Bombay with
strangers, she fell into a trance, was
taken off the boat and, for a month in the hospital, hung
like a white moth, a dangling button. In catatonia’s
luminescence, she blew out earthly
representations, imbued as newly unbound. This is a canvas where
lines cross under color what is freed
measurement of sitting still in open hope she thinks
bravery of the unstrung
the way my wing misunderstood white Page in a schoolgirl’s
notebook Penciled letters pleat
the edges. She favors clouds,
would pin their stems Down as the sisters
pin ledges Of wimples, her
failing, falling hem Call her simple for
not speaking French, for being left
with them. Into folds of snow as
seeking The world’s white
sleeves, she Finds again the
garden, creaking Branches of the
arching elm tree. L’orme, the sisters tell her. She hears arm And warm,
presses what she’s free To say against the
trunk’s own alarm. It’s winter
still. Mittens hardening To wooly ice. Cold gathering
to harm. The convent bells
begin to ring And she, transparent
as some unborn thing. Silhouette: Ana Menieta No hum in the
photograph no unseen apartment no blood or feathers
brick sidewalk no brook at the time
of her death she was searching no gravesites no
archeological ruin no forests in
Mexico no Cuba no pyrotechnics no
fire for her origins a studio no
branding iron in burning cloth no earth-body mud no
home- land no firsthand
hallmark no silhouette no
outcropping no sand traced as
scarecrow as body overwhelmed from
exile Jennifer Manion received her PhD from Johns Hopkins University
and currently writes and edits in Minneapolis, MN, where she
misses the ocean. Her poetry has appeared in Fence, inch and three
candles, among other journals. |
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