Selected Poem from What Remains (Turkey Buzzard Press, 2016).
I am watching the freckles
on the back of my fingers
multiply and divide like
lovers under the lens. The
speaker at my podium
says: He's my pimp. Tore
a branch from a tree. Beat
me. The branch broke.
I am lifting the law books
down, a browning obsolete
boulder older than I am,
the weight of a witness
of losses. The letters of the
law chew on my fingernails,
and now she is saying:
Choked me . . . can't
remember the rest.
I am skin closed in
this chair in this black cloth
swallowing more water these days
staying tempered, staying cool,
a surgeon dusting her hands
for powder burns, and suddenly
I look at her, wide-eyed, broken:
He shouted he'd
kill me. I don't know if he will.
I am blotting the battered bench
with a clawed Kleenex, aligning my
pencils just so. She says justice. She says
justice. She says: He dragged me by my hair.
My head broke the mirror.
Do you need to see the pictures?
First Place, The Colorado Lawyer Poetry Contest, 2006.
A POEM FROM THE BOOK:
In 2016 Jacqueline’s first book of poems, What Remains, was published by Turkey Buzzard Press.
"I believe in the power of poetry lies in its play of time and memory with music and meaning. . . Who are we? we ask, and scraps of experience rain down."
(Photo credit: Peter Bryson, Nooknose.com)
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