Showing posts with label Cellars of Words. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cellars of Words. Show all posts

Wednesday, July 5, 2023

Dead Bees

 

Photo © 2023 Jennifer Wagner

All your belittlements

have fallen at my feet

 

like dead bees.

 

They stung

and left me mumbling incoherently,

stumbling toward water.

 

But, I’m still standing.

 

And they are now

what they always were:

fertilizer

 

for my next

most magnificent

bloom.

 

 

© 2023 Jennifer Wagner

 

Friday, January 16, 2015

Resurgences (2 tenWords)

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winter garden
tiny grave beds
(tu)lips are whispering,
come, spring”


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tracing her scars
like braille, mouthing,

I
lived
to
tell



© 2015 Jennifer Wagner

For dVerse, the tenWord, a form created by Brian Miller.

Monday, November 11, 2013

Simply Jesus




your blood blooms still 
© 2013 Jennifer Wagner





When there’s not enough hyssop
to cleanse me of all these flaws—
I think I must live with them,
make slow improvements
with the
tick tick tick
of time’s cruel elements.

I know too well this unruly thing
inside me is me,
but there, too,
is the me that hungers for her first love

somewhere buried beneath
bruising, hardening, scarring
it throbs,
however disjointedly.

I am not a girl of
ritual, rules or religion.
I only know that at fifteen
I just wanted
to hold Your hand.

And now,
beyond church
and the things they add to it all,
and bitter politics
and the things they take away from it all,
and morality,
and all these rules I break—

I stand here today
wondering
when did I ever get the idea
You were not enough?

In dark,
in cloud,
in lightless days,
Your blood blooms still.

And I remember
I never needed
anything else anyway.



© 2013 Jennifer Wagner






1 Corinthians 2:2-5.  And I, brethren, when I came to you, did not come with excellence of speech or of wisdom declaring to you the testimony[a] of God. For I determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. I was with you in weakness, in fear, and in much trembling. And my speech and my preaching were not with persuasive words of human[b] wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that your faith should not be in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.


Saturday, August 17, 2013

Electric


© 2013 Jennifer Wagner



I searched and searched
for the sun, but could not find it.

So I traveled east to where your arms
grew soft against mine, softer.

The full bloom scent of electric blue
burst within the wild

to chase that dark day wisp of cloud to white—
white like night when just past black,

and into new day dawning
to find and enter that centered

rose of sun,
asking where I’ve been.



© 2013 Jennifer Wagner


Friday, July 12, 2013

Brandywine


Organic Brandywine Tomato Sprouts



I’m going to buy an orchard
and pick fruit, waving flies away.

I’ll wear a straw hat
and a sleeveless shirt.

I’m going to garden
and bake pies—

thick ones, full of hearty chunks of tart fruit.
And I am going to walk in the evenings,

when it’s still light,
after grilled chicken and sliced tomatoes.

And I’m going to forgive myself
when I remember all the things I never did.


© 2013 Jennifer Wagner