Jennifer Dorner

Visual Disturbances

Like the insides of pomegranates,
twisting.

Like kaleidoscopes,
I say, turning my hands.

A clear coat
of confetti scattered

like honeycombs
or bubbles,

dented and angular
like the surface of two moons.

Like yellow orbs
or rings of light when I close my eyes.

Like crystals,
except that’s really

just what the neuro-ophthalmologist
tells me they are.

Genetic cargo
from my grandmothers,

like frozen peas and poverty,
pulled through the optic nerve.

Jennifer Dorner's poetry has appeared in Chicago Quarterly Review, Cirque, Cloudbank, New Ohio Review, San Pedro River Review, Sugar House Review, The Inflectionist Review, The Timberline Review, and other journals. In 2019, her poems placed 1st in Willamette Writers Kay Snow Award for Poetry as well as 1st in two of Oregon Poetry Association's spring contests. She received her MFA from Pacific University in 2020.