Monthly Archives: January 2019

Inside the Inside, By Jennifer Angelina Petro

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Inside the Inside

By

Jennifer Angelina Petro

 

 

Inside the inside

Of her breath,

Where songs live,

And praise,

 

There is a space—

Round as the cup

Of a nightingale’s nest,

Hidden by a thicket,

Wing covered,

 

Where she lives—

This little one—

Holding the uncorruptable songs,

The unmolestable poems—

Inside, like water roots

Of lilies,

 

She sits, tracing spirals

In the sand, watched over

By Euterpe and Thalia,

Terpsichore and Polyhymnia,

 

They cannot keep her

From being invaded,

From years of her life

Being stolen,

From her innocence

Being crushed by night

Predators and shadow-

Dappled afternoon monsters,

Though they try with all

Their might to stand

Bracing against the door.

 

What they can do

Is protect the breath

Inside her breath,

Where songs live,

And praise, where poems

Sleep, like nightingale’s eggs,

Where drawings manifest, like

Treasure maps,

Where dances unfurl, like

Galaxies, where music flows, like

Ribbons and rivers,

Where rhythm lives, like

The wing-beats of every

Rising phoenix. That

They can do.  And will

Continue to do until she walks

With them to the seaside,

And points towards home.

 

 

 

 

 


 




This Body is Meant for More, by Jennifer Angelina Petro

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This Body is Meant for More

By

Jennifer Angelina Petro

 

 

 

It is necessary to dance,

In one form or another,

Even for a moment, alone,

Without judgment, or, at very least,

As little judgment as possible.

 

Dance over to the coffee pot,

Dance to the door, through the room,

To bed.

 

This body is meant for more

Than very nearly robotic, albeit

Necessary movements.

 

It is meant to unfold—fluid, grand,

Dramatic, slowly, curling downwards,

Rising upwards—arms outstretched–

Gathering and releasing a sky

Of a million suns.

 

 

 


 

Pockets of Solitude, by Jennifer Angelina Petro

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Pockets of Solitude

By

Jennifer Angelina Petro

 

 

It’s easy to close your eyes

Surrounded by such stillness,

And the light from bright windows

Beyond which the day busies itself

With so many purposeful things to do.

 

It’s easy to stand in the middle of the living room

And become a winter tree, draped with a shawl

Of silence.

 

It’s easy to slip away into pockets of solitude

Where the keys to doors drifting away

Become little bird bones of a life lost

To a childhood of summer breezes filled

With fear.

 

It’s easy to let the quiet become your body,

To become as a cup in a cupboard,

A microscope in a dark closet, hunched over,

Like a monk studying spirals on vellum leaves.

 

It’s easy to never wish again, to can’t help

But noticing how fragile you are, fragile

And yet primed to become a leviathan

In the sea of your own life.

 

 

 


 

In the Rooms of Our Days, by Jennifer Angelina Petro

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In the Rooms of Our Days

By

Jennifer Angelina Petro

 

 

 

Snow falls, soundless,

Layering on branches, like cells

On the body, creating silence

And drapery, touching everything.

The winter wishes for nothing else

Than to build up smooth mounds

Over the ruins of sleeping seeds

And the bones of animals that passed away alone,

Giving them the kind of protection required

For secret awakenings to warmth and light—

That we all need, that we all long for

As we stay awake all winter, walking back and forth

In the rooms of our days, unable to sleep,

Unable to close our eyes and trust the spring,

Unable to remember that once

We slept in darkness, that once

We emerged from the darkness,

That once, again and again, we blossomed

Into the hands of another, that we rose up

To a welcoming sky, and that we will all, once

Again, and again, return to sleep

Beneath scrolls of silent snow.