Jennifer Metsker

excerpt from “Psalms of Lament for Divine Imperatives”

At a truck stop   a rock outcropping    looks like
a struggling animal.          Snow melts on neon signs and
laminated menus.       Snow bleats
like a lamb.                 Snow feeds on itself.   
If a container ship       if the more viscous fluids
why aren’t you more aggressive         about
massive oil spills?         I can’t stop thinking about
all the people              washing ducks.           
Blessed be your sponges.        
To be so present yet               without exit      creates
migration       bottleneck worrying            and thieves.
I get impatient            when the turn signal
blinks.     But at 4am            I wake to novel passages
and every sentence is electric.      
The heater breathes and I think that it’s a he      and
I’m wondering about
expired concealer        flesh-tones       and
I’m disappointed in my carbon footprint.      These days
we are all         confounded by a virus.    It’s not easy
to read the news          the scrolling    ancient   loop
of data-entry and
            hand-made violence. 
Prescriptions in the system.    Spam calls from Texas.
And a fourth grade class will learn 
poem about spring               this autumn     because
that’s the nature of curriculum.
Then   here it comes again     the gratitude     gangplank.
I could walk off of it    into the ocean
            which I miss    along with
peach rings  and tuna creations.

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.