{"id":6105,"date":"2019-07-11T17:44:33","date_gmt":"2019-07-11T17:44:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/?p=6105"},"modified":"2019-08-10T17:17:21","modified_gmt":"2019-08-10T17:17:21","slug":"four-poems-anne-jennings-paris","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/?p=6105","title":{"rendered":"THREE POEMS – Anne Jennings Paris"},"content":{"rendered":"

LACUNA<\/strong>
\n 
\nOn trails of slash pine
\nand sabal palm, the sun
\nsuggests she turn reptile
\nand sprawl toward water
\nknow animal pleasure.
\n 
\nThe wind wants to empty her
\nwonders if she\u2019ll whither
\nto husk, involute
\nwhere language won\u2019t go.
\n 
\nInside her belly, sorrows dwell
\nshe wants to label each one
\nlike the wildflowers
\nshe copied as a child–
\nnaming the world made it real–
\nswamp mallow, lady slipper, trumpet vine.
\n 
\nHere, in the pines, she names
\nsaw palmetto, tickseed
\nand the Lubber grasshoppers
\nthat ride each other\u2019s backs–
\nthey slept all winter for this–
\negg, then nymph, then adult,
\nrepeat.
\n 
\nNo name for what comes after
\n(encyclopedias fall short)
\nunless carcass.
\nRot.
\n 
\nWhat is the name for her now?
\nMenopause–climacteric–say what she is not.
\nSenescence implies a coming end.
\nBut here in the pinelands, she feels new
\nskin flushed with sweat.
\nNot hag, not fishwife, matron, or crone–
\nshe waits on the wet season,
\nfecund,
\nconceives her lexicon.
\n 
\n <\/p>\n

\n

 
\n 
\nAT PINE ISLAND<\/strong>
\n 
\nThe Everglades sieve runoff into armor,
\nperiphyton plated as a gator\u2019s back.
\nHoles in oolite, like puddles on the moon,
\nhint at worlds beneath this one.
\nBeneath bayheads, scorpions creep
\nand under brush, the pythons sleep.
\n 
\nSurveyors drive stakes along the road,
\nmarks for mowers that daily speak
\nwith sharp, sweeping tongues
\nthese thickets into poetry.
\n 
\nMen rose rapine from the sea
\nlaid roads and tracks,
\ndrew acreages and platts.
\nArchitects of imagined space,
\nthey carved drain and swale
\nfrom Disney to the mangrove sea:
\nFlorida, but as they meant her to be.
\n 
\nAnd if they looked away?
\nShe beat them back with flails\u2014
\ngreen on sun-thinned walls\u2014
\nlaid waste whole cities with water.
\n 
\nSo the men fight harder.
\nTheir machines dredge and fill
\nutopic maps of want, cement the veil
\nbetween asleep and awake.
\n 
\nI see you, killing men,
\nholding back storm and vine\u2014
\nbut my words flow deeper than fear,
\na song you can\u2019t contain:
\n 
\nI am the stake
\nand the wilderness it keeps at bay,
\nthe river of grass and the sea,
\nI\u2019ll sound until there\u2019s nothing left to save,
\nhymn of what might still be.
\n <\/p>\n

\n

 
\nON THE OLD INGRAHAM HIGHWAY <\/strong>
\n 
\nWhen the world stopped seeing me,
\nI burned from the inside out, like grasses on the roadside,
\ndeep orange thrust, saw-blade-sharp if stroked the wrong way.<\/p>\n

When the world stopped hearing me,
\nI began to lose words. I let the wind empty me
\ntill my voice became a tiny chirp, louder at dusk and dawn.<\/p>\n

When the world forgot the taste of me, the texture of my skin,
\nmy body hardened like the spiked head of a thistle,
\npurpled and angry. Then, all that was left was to walk into the grasslands–<\/p>\n

Clouds drifted over the far cypress domes–
\nI let myself sink in marl, where the water hides,
\nuntil the Earth caught me. Now I am queen
\n 
\nof the frogs and insects, the tiniest fishes.
\nI use my last word to call the blackbirds to me;
\nthey dart and sing in the mystery of my long shadow–
\n 
\nthe days grow heavier, the earth darker.
\nWe wait on the wide, grassy slough for the thing that will fill us\u2014
\nthey say when the water comes, it will not come gently.
\n 
\n 
\nAnne Jennings Paris is a writer, a visual artist, and a mother. She has lived in the Portland, Oregon area for the past 15 years, and she is native of Gainesville, Florida. Her recent work looks at the human and non-human ecology of threatened landscapes and watersheds.
\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

LACUNA   On trails of slash pine and sabal palm, the sun suggests she turn reptile and sprawl toward water know animal pleasure.   The wind wants to empty her wonders if she\u2019ll whither to husk, involute where language won\u2019t go.   Inside her belly, sorrows dwell she wants to label each one like the [&hellip<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6125,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[325,196],"class_list":["post-6105","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-poetry","tag-everglades-by-sebastian-carlosena","tag-wikicommons-free-use"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6105","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6105"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6105\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6128,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6105\/revisions\/6128"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6125"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}