A-Minor

by Brett Elizabeth Jenkins

  

There was my first one, the one who was belly-
soft with me inside her. The one on the roof, hair
dripping wet and thunderquick, spilled wine
and candygripped. The ones, ones, ones in the parades
twirling sugarsticks, homesick and grinning ear
to elephant ear. The summerblondes at the beach,
the ones behind cameras. The ones with marvelous
teeth and the headband harem, the wheatgrass eaters
and the burningman devils in the head with tired sunk-in
eyes and opaque cups. Give me your tired, your poor,
your totebag women. Give me your baby-mommas
and their daughters, the first ones, the apple eaters,
the parceltongues, the bunheads and maryjanes
and sweet virgins and gretels and sinners and the dead.
I want your tremblehorses, your powerhouses, your
homes for desire. I want every woman because every
woman is a tender shoot in a vast vast forest
of time, a mountainquake inside of a tiny sigh.

Brett Elizabeth Jenkins lives and writes in Minneapolis. Look for her work in The Sun, AGNI, Mid-American Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Gargoyle, and elsewhere.