Windswept

 

Photo © 2024 Jennifer Wagner

The bones of my legs feel hollow,

wind tangles my hair,

 

the sun, past noon,

nudges my back

 

as my silhouette makes

a thin sketch limned in the dust.

 

I couldn’t read the room

for the call of too many voices,

 

or absence of one.

That’s why I’m out here

 

with the other nomads

like spent leaves

 

clustered around the edge

looking down into

 

the cold kisses

of the Colorado.

 

My skin, too, is cracking

with time—a horse

 

galloping away

back over my shoulder.

 

I glance at the oil left in my lamp

with a sense that I’m still waiting

 

for the wind to return

my spent voice

 

swallowed up

in the rush of deep black river,

 

to ride its echo back

to that which once was lush, was green.

 

 

© 2024 Jennifer Wagner

 

The Sunday Whirl

Empty

 

It backs the Agua Fria Freeway,

a rolled newspaper still in the drive.

Why didn’t I notice the signs?

 

There’s a crack in an upstairs window;

white roses in the yard

bend and droop like once proud nuns

now turned brown in the sun.

 

I remember when they were full sails,

taut and quivering at a busy harbor—

but this

 

matches my own heart for rent,

where boats come, but mostly go,

sitting like an empty womb,

 

a house for all

I wish I’d given you.

 

 

© 2024 Jennifer Wagner

 

 

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