Brett Elizabeth Jenkins

THE HISTORY OF SWEARING

The first time I hear you swear it is a young

summer. You pull me out

of the path of a car. I am on a new bike, now

crushed under the front end of a Honda.

It is not real to me the way you dart out, tear

my shirt for how hard you fling me back

onto the ground and yell to get in the damn house.

I will not think of this day until many years later

on your birthday when incidentally I purchase my first

adult bicycle. How I thought your anger was

at what was lost. How I did not know you loved

what you saved, and will not know it

until years after you are gone. 

OLD LIGHT

The whir of the night fan, blowing blonde hair

over dream eyes. Running sticky-footed, wet-eyelashed

across the kitchen floor after a nightmare, calling for mom.

The nuclear power plant controlling the weather, puffing

out white cloud after white cloud.

The Princess Jasmine pillowcase and the beanbag chairs.

Sneaking out when everyone is finally sleeping

to swing alone at the park, looking up and seeing, finally,

the stars for what they were:

a reminder of how long it takes to get anywhere,

and the fact that even after you leave there's still a part of you there,

streaming old light into empty Ohio cornfields.

CP

Brett Elizabeth Jenkins currently lives and writes in Albert Lea, MN with her husband and no children. Look for her poems in Beloit Poetry Journal, Potomac Review, PANK, Neon, and elsewhere.

Brett Elizabeth Jenkins

 

POEM BETWEEN SOBS

Some things do go wrong, just not in a way I can explain.
Shirts go missing. Red balloons escape
the fat hands of toddlers. Things like that. On any given Friday,

there is a fourth-grade sleepover somewhere, gradually
going awry.  Jonae Smilax and her mother are fighting again.
The screen door has a hole in it so the bugs come in.

Pale women everywhere hastily apply sunscreen.
An important post-it note falls into the heat register.
Things go wrong so regularly, and no one stops

to bemoan the mishappenings. My big wolf tears,
I assume that is what they are doing.
I have no other explanation.

HOW TO DIE

First, you must rise very early in the morning for thirty-five years.
Consider how much your body would weigh without a heart inside

to keep it down. You must feel okay with this figure. Get rid of your
books. Stop thinking your marginal notes will be found useful by others;

waterlog them. However many will fit in your bathtub. Forget
the quadratic formula. Forget all those phone numbers you still remember

from when you were a kid. Gradually erase other, more important things:
your mother's middle name, family recipes, your social security number.

Lose your favorite coat, your Bible, your car keys. Don't look for them.
Get your gallbladder removed. Schedule an amputation.

Think away your top layer of skin cells. Then the next layer. Your skin
will begin to redden (it's just the blood cells showing, no need to worry).

Remove the rest of the skin at a comfortable pace. These layers
no one has touched, no unwashed kisses here, those were gone

long before this. Hit bone. The rest of you will fit in bags and boxes.
Take apart your feet first and work your way up like you're putting

away a puzzle. Pack the bones tightly together; the smaller ones will fall
to the bottom, there. Before you know it, you've finished.

Someone will be along shortly to pack up your hands.

CP

Brett Elizabeth Jenkins currently lives and writes in Albert Lea, MN with her husband and no children. Look for her poems in Beloit Poetry Journal, Potomac Review, elimae, PANK, Neon, and elsewhere.