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
...

I have put my hand out to the word.
It’s been there for days. Hovering
between the newspaper and the television.
...

You’ve heard this story before –
becoming unravelled in Europe
or assaulted in some roadhouse
but bold as nipples and booted.
...

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,
...

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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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
...

Night’s sheet
weighs heavy
bearing the safety
of sleep
...

But to learn all there is in a street.
To treat the suburb’s noise as another lesson.
The amazement of traffic. Or celebrate
small terrors that balloon from locks and veins.
...

Mother about the letters i never wrote
the sirens outside batter my heart
and the fact i don't eat enough food
reminding me i am hungry
...