Morning on the Hill
The singer rosins the bow
of her throat. Her range
arranges furniture.
Equipped with light and lip,
the afternoon pools. Ring finger
freesias steady in a headless vessel.
The silverware drawer’s dry
shimmer. Its hymn. The subtle
sits around. A decade in the rug
changes its colour. I know it.
You know it orange in scent
and burn. Her voice smokes
in pillars and the steeples stick
in her shiny white teeth. The me
in me is spun around the floating
notes. Still sunk in the well
of a coat. Completion mistaken
for a poem. Through a jewel a mountain
might. Through a jewel,
a new one grew.
Secular Phenomena
divine future, open my blossom throat
a-choke with hopeless burning.
summer plummy with the furnished
fowl of autumn come too early.
somewhere a woman is turning
into me.
pollen staining the bowl
of her knees where a bee cloud
moves with lockjaw softness through
a thin-lipped noon and a song
is on again.
it’s on again, that sorry feeling, still burning rice
throughout the house, hands chapped, a hounding
smell in petty orbs of ordinary dumbness.
how have i come this far. what luck has not sliced
me with the headlights of cars. moon-phase
spun out of order turns the tides to tangles
as i harangue through the milk-like notion
of a pitch blind dip and take a bite out of the coast’s
violet wake. outside of the buy me. out away
from the love your / love my newness. throw my debt
till it dents to combs and bromide
my nights with tears through the tyrant’s
square for a price that’s fairer than most.
one dance for a black quarter and another
for the song that coats my good lung metal.
a rusted cackle in my limbs
as the city tosses me under. omnicide
of everything is redundant. fun, but. i take
in a wind like shade rock and it pulls me to the surface of winter.
i say, bring me another
season in frosted glass garnished with cities
lost to spill and mist. i say, run for the bold
rise of blood, not the cliff.
Jessie Jones is a writer living in Montreal. Her work has appeared in publications across Canada, the US and UK. Her first poetry collection, The Fool, was published by icehouse poetry in Fall 2020. More: @ohhijessiejones