Bloodscript in Blueblack

(a good woman, too)

Photo © Jennifer Wagner (artwork found at Gus's, a local restaurant fav)

The crows were the only lights—

the moon, cloaked in cloud,

made glints on their wings

just enough to see the shape of things

as they were.

 

But I’d seen enough

of that

black sky,

choked enough noxious smoke

in that pitiless city.

 

For too long,

I’d felt the dark bruise of my heart

spreading like disease.

 

Birds don’t always sing

me awake—those crows,

brilliant as sunrise,

with their ink-soaked wings,

 

dropped their quills in my palms,

and, for the brooding imp of my mind,

a map home

by pressing pain to page.

 

 

© 2026 Jennifer Wagner

 

We’re using color at dVerse.  Anyone else found writing poetry helps process pain, or get out of the blues? ;-)

 

Fault, Lines

 

You understood

nothing

except the piece

of yourself

you tore out of us

and tossed at the fault line

beating like a heart.

 

I built this poem

around the jagged wound,

refired in the kiln of a sun

who heard my

silent bleeding

and wept aloud

for the breaking you had done.

 

 

© 2025 Jennifer Wagner

 

dVerse Poetics: Building from the Broken