no soul matador

 

 

i’m going to

keep my music light

today

 

no soul matador

trying to run me

out of my

sacred places

 

just a gentle

coaxing

 

of nakai’s flute

and the turquoise arizona

sky

 

where birds and scars

belong to the

wind

 

where i sit

and wait for

myself

 

to begin

again

 

 

 

© 2025 jennifer wagner

 

 

“i...sit...and wait for myself” — Georgia O’Keeffe, from Roxana Robinson's biography of the artist

 

a poem for international women’s day

Poet's Pen Strokes

morgueFile

She was born

with a bottle

of blue darkness

inside her.

When the light

cracks

the glass,

shafts of light

splintering

the container,

the darkness

spreads

inky arms,

stretching through,

reaching out/into

everything

she is, she's been, has yet to see

and exits

on pages

needing both dark and light

to come

to be.

© 2016 Jennifer Wagner

Sideways

Toril “Smells Like Rain”

Winter moans elsewhere ---but here

within me,

yesterdays roam,

panicky.

Like spring rain. Staccato.

My poems are wet ash.

My skin, sand through hourglass.

I make

for shelter,

a grain too late---

caught

in clouds of least favorable reflection.

And though I'm determined to at least pace them,

I know

I can never outrun

the rain.

© 2015 Jennifer Wagner

For Imaginary Garden with Real Toads, Art with Toril.