On Contemplating Leaving My Children
by Jennifer Givhan
1.
I’ve hesitated beside the jewelweed, deep in the sevenbark,
told them I will not, not again—
What sovereign lies? What queen in her epistolary cage?
An ochre shotglass empties,
a lantern, unlit, heedlessly shines.
In vain I have opened mirrors & edges of mirrors.
2.
A blanket ripped during sleep, a dream turns
cold & the body knows
something is wrong. Wake up. Wake up!
Traveling flatland, winter branches praising a slate of sky
I have passed a shotgunned doe
& known, bloodred, the dying in me
would fight back, hunter try her might.
3.
The church nearby, the snow is piled high. Something brightens
in the distance. I tread carefully.
4.
Once, I fell into a river but wouldn’t drown.
If limbs are made of splintered oars
& hearts of apple blossoms,
this world’s for me.
Jennifer Givhan is a Mexican-American poet from the Southwestern desert. She is the author of Landscape with Headless Mama (2015 Pleiades Editors’ Prize). Her honors include an NEA Fellowship, a PEN/Rosenthal Emerging Voices Fellowship, the Frost Place Latin@ Scholarship, the 2015 Lascaux Review Poetry Prize, and the Pinch Poetry Prize. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Best of the Net 2015, Best New Poets 2013, AGNI, Crazyhorse, Blackbird, and The Kenyon Review. She is Poetry Editor at Tinderbox Poetry Journal and teaches at The Poetry Barn.