my hipparchus

 

mapping the stars

on my back

you don’t ask me

for anything—

 

and let me cry

to forget what’s happened

between now

and the last good year

 

you don’t ask

for anything—so i can

remember how

to give the stars their names again

 

 

© 2023 Jennifer Wagner

 

for dverse quadrille #175:  craft a poem in exactly 44 words using some form of the word “map”

 

Soon: Spiders

Dalí looks at me

from across the room,

time melting as if exhausted

from the heat.

That look: like puppy dog eyes

pleading for a shift in the breeze.

But, no, I say,

don’t do that to me.

The darkness is coming,

so damp and rich I can taste it.

And soon:

spiders.

© 2019 Jennifer Wagner

Reference:  Salvador Dalí's clocks in The Persistence of Memory.

Lion Around

The Sleeping Gypsy, 1897, by Henri Rousseau,

image via The Mag

If you’re going to have

a pet lion

you’d better carry a stick.

He may get bored of your

pink hair, sitar strumming

and cheap wine.

After all

that fun gypsy-ing

one does, eventually,

have to eat.

© 2014 Jennifer Wagner

Ok, I’m just having a bit of poetic fun with this wonderful painting by Rousseau provided by the excellent poet and hostess Tess Kincaid at Magpie Tales.  Check out the work of other writers there--I’m sure they came up with something less cringeworthy and cliché than I did in writing to this image.  :-)  I think it’s my mood. 

And I used to have pink hair on one side.  I kinda miss it.