Jill Alexander Essbaum Biography

A clementine
Of inclement climate
Grows tart.
...

is my season
of defeat.

Though all
is green

and death
is done,

I feel alone.
As if the stone

rolled off
from the head

of the tomb
is lodged

in the doorframe
of my room,

and everyone
I've ever loved

lives happily
just past

my able reach.
And each time

Jesus rises
I'm reminded

of this marble
fact:

they are not
coming back.
...

We shall not come again, not to this wet
and summer day, nor to the waylaid place
where you laid waste to me and I to you,
and where we reminisced recalling who
did what to whom. We shall not come again.
Not to the bed we thrashed nor to the memory
of the way I brushed my hair back, nights,
nor to the air we dared to share to breathe,
or couldn't quite. We shall not come again.
No more, my face seen round your corner, or
your briefcase found beneath my table. We
weren't able, apt or sane. We shall not come
again. Nor cry nor clutch, not even once
again. We shall not cover up in quilts
or bear the beast of one another's guilts
or sit in silences made saddest by
what was. We shall not come again. Because.
...

A clementine
Of inclement climate
Grows tart.

A crocus
Too stoic to open,
Won't.

Like an oyster
That cloisters a spoil of pearls,
Untouched—

The heart that's had
Enough
Stays shut.
...

The border
of a thing.

Its edge
or hem.

The selvage,
the skirt,

a perimeter's
trim.

The blow
of daylight's

end and
nighttime's

beginning.
A fence

or a rim,
a margin,

a fringe.
And this:

the grim,
stingy

doorstep
where

the lapse
of passage

happens.
That slim

lip of land,
the liminal

verge
that slips

you past
your brink.

Where
and when

you
blink.
...