Jennifer Metsker

excerpt from “Psalms of Lament for Divine Imperatives”

You’re the apple of my eye.    The bruise
on my thigh.
Where do you live?     Inside the sky?             Yes
but also in a proximate problematic cavern.
Or at a crossroads       that cavorts with
crushed spirits
growing greener than grass    nothing natural
just a poly-sheen         on by-products.
The house is too quiet.
There’s a traitorous entropy in my stomach
so I commandeer the remote and picture in picture
the richness of a golf tournament.
Forgetful is the luminous every night chronicle.
Figures walk and bend            walk and bend
assembling tables and bookshelves.
How many lessons must I learn before I’m released
from this history?
Evanescent      evergreen        eventual          leaving.
Sally calls this approach “auto-affection”
as she dips her fingers into resin.
Your precious gems glitter under a freeway overpass  
but       your divers can’t reach them.
Rumpled gift wrap      gray shadows on snow.
Toss and turn beneath light fixture buzz gold mask.
You said this would be hard    but
you didn’t say it would be meaningless.

Jennifer Metsker is the author of the poetry collection Hypergraphia and Other Failed Attempts at Paradise, which won the Editor’s Prize from New Issues Press. Her poetry has appeared in Beloit, Rhino, Birdfeast, Gulf Coast, The Cream City Review, and other journals. Most recently her work can be found in The Dialogist, Four Way Review, Pigeon Pages, and THE SHORE. She lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where she is the Writing Coordinator at the Stamps School of Art and Design.