no matter how you spell it...

photo © 2014 jennifer wagner

if i could

i would

break off

a piece

of the sun

to give

to you

© 2014 Jennifer Wagner

Happy Mother’s Day to all the mother’s hearts out there!

© 2014 chalk sketch by me and my 6 year old.  He loves his family…we’ll keep working on the spelling…smiles…

Are You Not Entertained?

We like

to do nothing.

For a moment

he found himself

looking up from the tracks

at scores of faces watching them.

“Some people were

snapping photos

or taking video with their cell phones,”

he said.

“It was amazing

seeing all these people

doing nothing,” he said.

“It was

an eye-opener.”

And we answer:

we like

to do nothing

but

snap photos

for Facebook and Instagram,

stand and observe—comment

on the misfortunes

of others

and how

the world

is so wrong.

But never

get our hands dirty

while she tumbles

head first

from the platform

we’re all

preaching from.

© 2014 Jennifer Wagner

For dVerse Meeting the Bar:  Conversation/Dialogue in Poetry

Italicized words are from the news article by Murray Weiss in DNAinfo New York:  Humble Hero Saves Teen Who Fell Onto Subway Tracks.

Title is a quote from the film Gladiator.

freebase

Chair with the Wings of a Vulture, 1960, Salvador Dali

from broken life

to broken life

the deadlight

arises

vulturous

lit candles warming

the addicts’ spoons,

lift plumes

like blackbirds’ wings,

ominous,

cancerous

moments that free them

to carrion,

eyes nightblind

to hope threaded

in a spindle spoke sky

© 2014 Jennifer Wagner

Magpie Tales 218

The Sunday Whirl, Wordle 159

fair maidens

photo © 2014 Jennifer Wagner

strawberry cream

and mint

renaissance girls,

spring’s popsicle juleps,

and the deer’s delight—

who wait

for the slumbering

of the gardener-knight

© 2014 Jennifer Wagner

Fuliginosity

That April of the fall

it was already the burning season;

petal-damp tulips lined

the bent road, curving west.

We donned the camouflaged windbreaker

of nomads, who have nothing but each other—

dashed from rock to rock along the river’s edge

watching flames lick the surface, catching fire

to ferns and evergreens,

and burning down the barns and silos

behind us.

We ran from it, singed, to each other,

knowing together

we’d be able to save us

and our crumpled matchbook hearts

tossed somewhere in the

ka-chunk, ka-chunk, ka-chunk

of old tracks, trained so many

miles long.

© 2014 Jennifer Wagner