Jennifer Reeser Poems

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• Best Jennifer Reeser Poems
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by Reeser, Jennifer

 We’re through, we’re through, we’re through, we’re through, we’re through
and – flanking, now, the edges of our schism –
it seems your coldness and my idealism
alone for all this time have kept us true.

Credulous I and hedonistic you:
opposed, refracting angles of a prism
who challenged sense with childish skepticism –
and every known the bulk of mankind knew....Read more of this...

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by Reeser, Jennifer

 In the upstairs hallway, complacent sunlight
stings the walls with gold and translucent almond
over Turkish runners betraying patterns
faded with travel.

At their raveled edges, my daughter slumbers
in the room from which this lost sun arranges
through a window high on an eastern sill of
drapes and black lacquer.

Past the pillowcase where her blonde head swivels
in a dream of chocolate, or paint and horses,
I...Read more of this...

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by Reeser, Jennifer

 Moscow ballet at seven in the evening.
You look at everything. You lay your cheek
against my shoulder, smoothing down my sleeve,
the Russian blizzards somehow less than bleak,
portrayed with whimsy on the backdrop screens
in dolloped watercolors as they are.
I ask if you know what their movement means.
You wish our situation not so far.

And everywhere, the audience defies
convention and conformity, some dressed
as...Read more of this...

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by Reeser, Jennifer

 Send your army home to their wives and children.
It is late. Your soldiers are burdened, thirsty.
Lock the doors, the windows, and here in darkness
 lie down beside me.

Speak of anything we possess in common:
ground or law or sense. Only speak it softly.
Spiders crawl the crevices. Violent voices
 ruin their balance,

and they’ll fall – intuit – upon our faces,
where I...Read more of this...

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by Reeser, Jennifer

 I’d buy you a Babushka doll, my heart,
and brush your ash-blonde hair until it gleams,
were Russia and our land not laid apart
by ocean so much deeper than it seems.

I have an oval pin, though -- glossy lacquer
hand-made in Moscow, after glasnost came,
with fine, deft roses on a background blacker
perhaps, than history’s collective shame.

I’ve done my best to compass you...Read more of this...

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by Reeser, Jennifer

 Whether the clouds had abandoned Geneva that evening
no one can say now, but what I remember are roses
bruised at their edges, and china cups yellowed with age.
“I am too sick of interior vapors,” I told you,
“Find us a corner of sunlight, and hammer it down...
Tell me again I’m so lovely the insects won’t bite.”
Do you remember it, Victor? A...Read more of this...

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by Reeser, Jennifer

 Strumming your polished guitar with long, nail-lightened fingers,
where are you now, leaning forward a peasant-dressed arm –
lark on the near side of midnight, my crescent curb lady,
ear to your sound, dangling each with a silver folk charm?
Sweet was your voice for an evening, amid the brash jazzy –
seamless soprano, your scales a tough, platinum thread.
Angel on brick, tipping jar...Read more of this...

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by Reeser, Jennifer

 Yellow makes a play for green among
the rows of some poor farmer's field outside
the Memphis city limits' northern edge.
A D. J. plays The Day He Wore My Crown,
not knowing it entices into tears
this woman never once disposed to travel
the holiday before. My children squander
unleavened bread brought forth from Taco Bell.
What sacrifice of mine could be worth mention?
Enshroud it. Christ's...Read more of this...

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by Reeser, Jennifer

 Imagining you’d come to say goodbye,
I made a doll of raffia and string.
I gave her thatch hair, and a broomstick skirt
of patchwork satin rags. Around each eye
I stitched thick lashes. Such a touching thing
she was! That even you could not debate –
impassive, undemanding and inert.
Yes, surely she’d cause you yourself to sigh.
Around her breast, I sewed a loden ring
to...Read more of this...

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by Reeser, Jennifer

 She recognizes him at last as Other,
not Self. I see her in my mind, hot wax
about to plummet from the lifted candle.
Should closeness be so vulnerable to fact?

The wrinkles in her gown – a troubling grayness
amid chaste white – I see as always moved
by some upended breeze against their terrace;
his face I see as turned, not wholly proved,

his faith...Read more of this...

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by Reeser, Jennifer

 Fold this, our daughter’s grave,
and seal it with your kiss.
For all the love I gave,
you owe me this.

Inside of me, she had
your lips and tongue, my air
of grimness, thin and sad,
with your thick hair.

Inside of you, I trust,
she was a simple mesh
of need and paper, lust –
potential flesh.

And there was such pure song
in life begun from you,
I held the...Read more of this...

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by Reeser, Jennifer

 In my dream, Celebrity, four pianos
scored the room, and you -- on an antique sofa
near two dark-haired innocents -- asked that I play
something immortal.

Dust motes grayed the air, and a sage-green shadow
draped the walls in color like sifted powder.
I agreed, but wandered, untold, too many
keys to consider....Read more of this...

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by Reeser, Jennifer

 What would I do without your voice to wake me?
Cor ad cor loquitur, I’m loath to know.
Kitsch operas sound, unhesitant to shake me,
The sheers undrawn, the heavens hardly showing,
My camisole askew, of lace-trimmed black –
Not red, not white; not passionate or pure.
I raise the volume, and the voices crack—
Vanilla scores: accessible, obscure.
But what would I do without your certain...Read more of this...

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by Reeser, Jennifer

 I wish I could,
 like some, forget,
and never anguish,
 nor regret,

dismissive, free
 to roam the street,
no matter how
the visions meet.

Remembrance is
 a neighborhood
where convicts live
 with great and good,

its roads of red,
 uneven brick,
whose surfaces –
 both rough and slick –

spread out into
 a patchwork plan.
Sometimes at night
 I hear a man

vault past the fence,
 and cross the yard,
my...Read more of this...

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by Reeser, Jennifer

 This night slip, in his honor
flipped inside out – of lace-
edged netting – is the color
of Shaka Zulu’s face;

of panther flower at midnight
where crow and boa doze;
of vertigo and stage fright
in frail Ophelia’s clothes.

I wear it as a symbol.
Its ripped, Chantilly trim
I fixed without a thimble,
was pricked and bled for him.

A torn band may be mended,
but what if he...Read more of this...

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