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 Jessica Nash is a recent graduate of The
Evergreen State College where she studied creative writing and
performance. She is currently pursuing a degree in journalism.
She is an active member in the Olympia, WA poetry community and
specializes in dramatic, voice-centered poetry readings. She has
been published in on-line journals such as Poems Niederngasse,
Common Swords, The Erotica Readers and Writers Association and
Moondance (Dec. 05) and several local print journals. Her
self-published chapbook is titled A World of Buried Paintings.
Suffering is the Sweet Meat of Peaches
Suffering is the sweet meat of peaches,
abandoned by the tree,
all slush, bruise and juice.
Felt skin severed and probed by bird peaks.
How long must they rot?
Fruit bleeds and nourishes earth.
Kneaded by sunbeams, sneaker soles,
its stench sifts through seasons of decay-
and, most painful, is muffled
by perpetual leaf fall.
Each person must contain
their own private tragedy,
a basket of perished peaches.
Many, on their knees offer
their orchard corpses-in hope
another's breath will envelop
all that hurts.
Few will reach to taste.
Except poets-alchemists of calamity.
Those who weave woes with magic,
embroider beauty into emblems of despair
and offer, on their knees, a metaphor.
Eulogy for a Crow
Dear crow,
driving down Raft Street along the bay,
we first saw you, twig-feet fixed
in the tracks of a gold car.
Like train dodgers, your species behaves this way.
Then, I knew-you would not fly.
I yelled out for you.
You tumbled beneath the wheel-
I yearned to pull over and nurse you,
but a flux of cars followed.
You tried to lift your left wounded wing,
smashed against the pavement,
limping on one foot.
Tell me about your pain.
What fear smothered your heart
head-on with the wheel?
Did you wail to the sun
or flap your feathers one last time?
Oh lithe creature, how may I capture
your broken bird-bones?
No trace exists of your fractured skeleton.
Are you a Phoenix, that rose and reassembled,
shaking the insects from your wingspan?
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