Jeanne Wagner

THERE’S NO PLACE TO WRITE HIS NAME

— Texas Baby Born Without Skin (Headline, USA Today)  

He has no skin to write his name on.  

Later he will infer touch from a face, a voice—

the way the blind see.

He is a letter without an envelope,

pages with no binding. 

He’s a cloud furled by the moment’s wind,

the tenderness of a thought,

his longing exposed,

his song without accompaniment.

Even the backyard plums, the tangerines,

come wrapped in skin,

but he is bare. 

Jeanne Wagner is the author of four chapbooks and three full-length collections: The Zen Piano-mover, winner of the NFSPS Poetry Prize, In the Body of Our lives, Sixteen Rivers Press and Everything Turns Into Something Else, published in 2020 as runner-up for the Grayson Books Prize. Her work has appeared in Cincinnati Review, North American Review, Florida Review, Shenandoah and The Southern Review.