Jen Coleman
Anabiosis
The light now is distant and pale,obscured by pines.It’s not yet time
for blood-pink sunsets on snow,but all seasons are implicit.All years, all moments,
future and past,implicit in the now from whichyou try to wrench yourself away.
Note your hunger,your inclinationtoward extremes. Relentless
paths to moratoriums—the acutewait in your exospheric corner,anticipating the ice storm
which will snap this forestwith its weight.Here is another winter,
monthless and blank,incubation. Striatedwith shadows above the valley’s
pyrrhic cycles of self-denial,how completely a mountaincan blot out a city.
Tsunami Poem
Our grievances seem so absurd:if the aqueous wall came right for
our faces and we saw it, in allits sociopathic, cold
finality, like the blank rolled-backstare of a shark just before
the kill, would you still say,“But you’re not supposed to love me,”
as if love were a burden, as ifyou didn’t love me, as if when
the end eyes us down and tells uswe’ve had our chance, sorry,
as it inevitably will,as it, in a sense, always does,
second after second— tell me, whatelse is there then, what else ever?
Jen Coleman dropped out of high school. She holds a MFA from Hollins University, where she was awarded a full fellowship. Her work has recently appeared in Mêlée Live, Four and Twenty, and The Jackson Hole Review, and is forthcoming in The Innisfree Poetry Journal and Right Hand Pointing. She currently teaches English at Lynchburg College and lives in Roanoke, Virginia, with her two Manx cats.
The light now is distant and pale,obscured by pines.It’s not yet time
for blood-pink sunsets on snow,but all seasons are implicit.All years, all moments,
future and past,implicit in the now from whichyou try to wrench yourself away.
Note your hunger,your inclinationtoward extremes. Relentless
paths to moratoriums—the acutewait in your exospheric corner,anticipating the ice storm
which will snap this forestwith its weight.Here is another winter,
monthless and blank,incubation. Striatedwith shadows above the valley’s
pyrrhic cycles of self-denial,how completely a mountaincan blot out a city.
Tsunami Poem
Our grievances seem so absurd:if the aqueous wall came right for
our faces and we saw it, in allits sociopathic, cold
finality, like the blank rolled-backstare of a shark just before
the kill, would you still say,“But you’re not supposed to love me,”
as if love were a burden, as ifyou didn’t love me, as if when
the end eyes us down and tells uswe’ve had our chance, sorry,
as it inevitably will,as it, in a sense, always does,
second after second— tell me, whatelse is there then, what else ever?
Jen Coleman dropped out of high school. She holds a MFA from Hollins University, where she was awarded a full fellowship. Her work has recently appeared in Mêlée Live, Four and Twenty, and The Jackson Hole Review, and is forthcoming in The Innisfree Poetry Journal and Right Hand Pointing. She currently teaches English at Lynchburg College and lives in Roanoke, Virginia, with her two Manx cats.