Jennifer Valdies
Jewelweed
Touch me not wild by the river after dark and boughed I saw a shooting star
dodecatheon amethystinum driving home you were the shield sure we go far back
the wind and me but secretly something was beginning little rattle in the speaker
moulted kiss on the eardrum AC hot as a breath the space we make like
soundboards and pedals for what could be said bigger and darker than all the
words gathered at the edge of that falling feeling familiar unreachable you only
remember as it happens again in the body but snow on your hand richocheting
and silks knit night circling sycamore tree grooves the first time I ever saw your
hands I looked at you and you happened and that’s how it felt to come back
climbing through the cotton wool of days watching forms soften and skate from
underneath a frozen pond and night like shadows pulled thin and forevering the
sheen dissolves you wake up gasping on the other side of the water remember
mornings spent running distances of unmeasurable light and me a wasp in the fig
of my life I wanted sureness like the watermelon yellow ellipsed seeds sweetwater
named summer we wore on both hands blind to the other life waiting for me to
step into it and of course it’s me who sends the moments back each a small gift
cold wash stillness of seeing something before I think we can remember the
future if we listen quietly enough we can leave the clearing and approach the
other world in which we live dreaming this one over and over this balsam and
loam this underthemoon this pearl and kettle this soft this car a wire a reel a
chord alive on every filled pothole gleaming green through lights thrumming
overhead obscuring all cold stars black clouds our boat unmoored to dream and
no end to this night of infinite distances divisible indefiniteltly I wanted to
believe you I wanted to believe that somewhere out there I hear me saying it’s all
going to be okay all this is strings all kaleidescopes you’re going to remember it
all it all will be brief and endless as basil strawberries swallows shells juncos
jewelweed starlings those shards of love mussels cinnamon nightshade and
lightning I swear I can see it not the creek not the star gone not embers not dawn
not the axis tilting not the season churning not our changing not our falling not
our burning not the hours not rain not the years not leaving not just dreaming
not you not even me not the end not the end not the end tell me it’s not the end
If a Lasso
Sorry I told you
the moon was wrong.
Wanna throw myself over it
stretch my muscles
to yucca cording
beat fine, braided tight.
Give me use.
If a lasso
is spineless, unamounting,
dull, beat—fine. At least
it might catch
something otherworldly, endless
just once, and in time
to just wreck it all anyway
[blue lichen, blue moth]
blue lichen, blue moth
black lamb, true north
gold lark, old myth
hyacinth, copper print
scythed field, red mice
spearmint, flat white
ghost shape, morning cold
wintergreen, feather ode
orchid fold, oregano
I don’t know
I don’t know
Jennifer Valdies is a writer and visual artist from Los Angeles, California, currently pursuing an MFA in poetry at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.