like winter sun warming the crisp outline
of evergreens on frost’s last kiss,
like an impression of stars
bursting in indigo nightframe,
like orion, swift-slaying, swaying
between boughs,
she is electric, blue-jazz summer sky,
ricocheting
with all the fierce beauty
of a flowering storm
© 2026 jennifer wagner
q44: flower
photo © jennifer wagner, from las noches de las luminarias, desert botanical garden, phoenix, az
punxsutawney phil
said there’ll be more winter chill—
but around here
there’s winter cheer and (root)beer,
tell that mole—
‘cause hawks are going to the super bowl
© 2026 jennifer wagner
poetic bloomings #580: relative cold
photo © ian wagner
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)…”
image generated by me using substack image generator
a heavy garland of sorrow
releases from
my winter-ragged bones
sitting on this ginger-crumb beach,
dipping my sugared toes,
letting the water wreath
around my ankles
icicle clear—it’s here,
on holiday i hibernate,
and marshmallow-float
the weight, and gift,
of all this wonderland
© 2025 jennifer wagner