still life/magazine cover

 

smashed fig leaves for tea on the table,

and collected plums—one three-quarter eaten,

 

white blossoms bowing half-mast

in a gleaming jade vase,

 

ironing board in the corner,

steam rising from the unplugged iron—

 

even an imagined whiff of perfume

of someone who’s just left the room—

 

my thoughts turn the page

and see

 

my parents

with their heads now bent with snow

 

and book a flight

home—

 

petals falling in three-quarter time—

like snow, like dust—

 

still life,

but collecting all the same

 

 

© 2026 jennifer wagner

  

Late for but inspired by Dora’s dVerse Poetics: Borrowing Bishop, with instructions to “dip your word-brush into Bishop’s poetic inkpot, as it were, consciously incorporating accuracy (detail), spontaneity (immediacy), and mystery (revelation)…”

 

dVerse oln #400

 

image generated by me using substack image generator 

Ladies of a Certain Age Know What I Mean

 

While I can still rock

a sexy halter top, tastefully, though,

and not too cropped—

 

when that day comes,

ladies of a certain age get the drift,

 

when the question

has turned to when, not if—

it’s off to the thrift to

 

alter top.

 

© 2025 Jennifer Wagner

 

dVerse Quadrille:  a poem of exactly 44 words including the word “alter" 

Day 21 of NPM

 

From a Silk Hat

Sometimes I pull these poems

out of the hat of my heart—

 

black coffee, moonlight,

a silver-tipped spear.

 

Take what you will of them,

they’re mine to give—all or none. 

 

Like this one.

Darling rabbit, unfrantic, and

 

soul-bounce away, less fretful

of time’s sand already swept away

 

by gravity through finger-roots,

filling up the bottom

 

of the hourglass.  Now see this.

New soil.

 

Lift, flip,

start again.

 

 

© 2025 Jennifer Wagner

 

Poetic Bloomings:  Endless

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