Jill Jones Poems

She's learning about the desert
where things are not as flat as they seem.
She needs the plain, the wind, scrub,
no longer believes mirages
...

Without roots and prefiguring
the shaping of ferns
bronze bright in the sun cleft
along a wet fault line
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I have put my hand out to the word.
It’s been there for days. Hovering
between the newspaper and the television.
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You’ve heard this story before –
becoming unravelled in Europe
or assaulted in some roadhouse
but bold as nipples and booted.
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The way you turn at night toward me
so I take your breath across my face, then
away. And I breathe you, back bare
as a beautiful open country, pale surface
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Fifteen minutes at the autobank, waiting for money,
and the nations stroll by with their children
and the new languages.
So many words for Saturday and shopping,
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The snow was in the sun
There was a prick in garden
A truck jack-knifed the particulars
There was a smell of old gas
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I have taken off my little dress, there’s no scope
for me within it, there are things
that fall down the body, like breath and the texture
of the flap. This is a button I can’t do.
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If the past is correct, it was here she couldn’t move.
They agreed on shadows, let dust slope across the light
buried watches under the bricks where the damp rose.
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To move slowly at the bench
and cupboards of a lit-up kitchen,
to watch a woman do this
and then walk on. To turn
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