Jenny Browne
3 poems
**
Love Letter to a Stranger (Girl)
Blood warmed the green
stones around your neck.
Closer to it, the moon
smells like gunpowder.
The man who last
walked there
would now erase his steps.
All night our beach
tumbles pieces of broken
wine bottle soft enough
to want inside
the hand reaching down.
Once, in junior high,
I rubbed an eraser
on the back of my own
until the skin ripped
and this we called
the sissy test.
You said I would
but I’m wearing a skirt.
**
Love Letter to a Stranger (Suicide)
Of all the creatures, there are those best
............defined by what they escape from,
and those who are always escaping.
The mice worrying our hollow walls, loud
............as bartime Harleys chucking gravel
up and down 2 a.m. seem to be both,
while your last chatter what still sounds
............when the wheels and claws stop. Hello,
my name is Wynn and I’ll be your customer tonight.
Why yes, I’d love to try your new green tea frappie frappie.
............Your wallet full of two dollar bills,
stomach full of bitter pills.
Your mother’s voice gnawed the wires, pure
............animal and trapped, and I can’t escape that.
Something has to happen next to make a story.
Were this forest, we’d say birds ate your path back.
............On the prairie, crowds of dandelions would be
first to return after the long summer fires.
But this is Houston, city of closed doors, and your
............profile rises from every key I try. Someone else
sees the molars of a distant mountain range.
Either way, no opening mouth to spin the end
............for which you hid, and practiced.
If we become people because of what we want,
and I dream the quick and painless demise
............of living things, kicking the mousetraps,
upside down and empty at dawn, then what?
These days, red eyes can be removed from
............family photographs. You see
how they run? And just because I might have
preferred you move somewhere warm and distant
............as Molokai, holidaying there with nice people
unrelated to mine, doesn’t mean I wanted you to die.
**
return to sawbuck 4.3
**
Jenny Browne was James Michener Fellow in Poetry at University of Texas-Austin, and now lives in downtown San Antonio and teaches at Trinity University in San Antonio. She's the author of two collections, At Once and The Second Reason, both from the University of Tampa Press. She's currently finishing a third manuscript entitled "Some Studies for the Monster." New poems from it have recently appeared or are forthcoming in Anti-, AGNI Online, American Poetry, Bat City Review, Gulf Coast, and the Massachusetts Review. Visit her online here.
**
Love Letter to a Stranger (Girl)
Blood warmed the green
stones around your neck.
Closer to it, the moon
smells like gunpowder.
The man who last
walked there
would now erase his steps.
All night our beach
tumbles pieces of broken
wine bottle soft enough
to want inside
the hand reaching down.
Once, in junior high,
I rubbed an eraser
on the back of my own
until the skin ripped
and this we called
the sissy test.
You said I would
but I’m wearing a skirt.
**
Love Letter to a Stranger (Suicide)
Of all the creatures, there are those best
............defined by what they escape from,
and those who are always escaping.
The mice worrying our hollow walls, loud
............as bartime Harleys chucking gravel
up and down 2 a.m. seem to be both,
while your last chatter what still sounds
............when the wheels and claws stop. Hello,
my name is Wynn and I’ll be your customer tonight.
Why yes, I’d love to try your new green tea frappie frappie.
............Your wallet full of two dollar bills,
stomach full of bitter pills.
Your mother’s voice gnawed the wires, pure
............animal and trapped, and I can’t escape that.
Something has to happen next to make a story.
Were this forest, we’d say birds ate your path back.
............On the prairie, crowds of dandelions would be
first to return after the long summer fires.
But this is Houston, city of closed doors, and your
............profile rises from every key I try. Someone else
sees the molars of a distant mountain range.
Either way, no opening mouth to spin the end
............for which you hid, and practiced.
If we become people because of what we want,
and I dream the quick and painless demise
............of living things, kicking the mousetraps,
upside down and empty at dawn, then what?
These days, red eyes can be removed from
............family photographs. You see
how they run? And just because I might have
preferred you move somewhere warm and distant
............as Molokai, holidaying there with nice people
unrelated to mine, doesn’t mean I wanted you to die.
**
return to sawbuck 4.3
**
Jenny Browne was James Michener Fellow in Poetry at University of Texas-Austin, and now lives in downtown San Antonio and teaches at Trinity University in San Antonio. She's the author of two collections, At Once and The Second Reason, both from the University of Tampa Press. She's currently finishing a third manuscript entitled "Some Studies for the Monster." New poems from it have recently appeared or are forthcoming in Anti-, AGNI Online, American Poetry, Bat City Review, Gulf Coast, and the Massachusetts Review. Visit her online here.
Labels: 4.3, fall 2010, jenny browne
