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Best Poems From
JENNIFER JUNEAU
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1.
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History Lesson
An airtight night driving through Berlin late,
unsympathetic to time, your steely eyes chained
to the road like a mindless factory gate.
I no longer believed in the moon, but what remained
of the black and white prison
you once called home, the past that made you tick.
I strained to understand communism,
your years in the German Democratic Republic.
With a mouth full of flour, even the thickest voice
must tread light.
I loved you more the less I was your choice.
The mess of holes we discovered that night
leaked the plush lawns of my country, though I didn't have all.
And all it took to break down your wall.
(Yemassee Journal, Vol. XV, No.1, Fall 2007)
Jennifer Juneau
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2.
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Conclusion of the Stone Bard
In the end I was anyone's gimcrack, stung
and marginalized by moonflaw.
A time I rose like knotgrass in the raw
night. Discourse drizzled from my tongue
like allseed fertilizing an unequivocal rent
that divided my ignorance from her light.
Huntress cast a muzzle against my voice again!
(Acumen doesn't come accidental twice.)
I digested her lies, an acrid feast of doom.
Her garden became a sickbay for the wit
as I, monolith in limbo, was a perfect fit
for her jealous nature that characterizes 'Moon.'
In retrospect I was the chosen bait
for her charade. Her false beams to falsify my fate.
(Cincinnati Review, Vol.3, No.1.2006)
Jennifer Juneau
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3.
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Postcard
Midnight bells to boom & still
the frayed maid sucking up to the moon,
that nefarious stepmum, a fossil
in limbo, sexually frustrated & envious me youth,
nonetheless stunning. (After all,
she is a woman too.) & I am mirrored in her face
alone & sublunary as I am installed
in this glossy rectangular space:
The Alps, phlegmatic & fuliginous
as death, a comely myth this. No prince to smack
my mouth betimes with sublime superficial kiss
or force glass shoe. White flag in wrack,
bent in beam, I scribe to you. Anyone this.
I, my bony shadow. My frick & frack.
(Cincinnati Review, Vol.3, No.1.2006)
Jennifer Juneau
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4.
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Then It Came To Me
Even the sun was uncomfortable
the last time we picknicked by the lake,
stale wine and an aging cake
between us. I never realized what stable
meant until I saw a band of nuns
subtracting color from the day.
They had their math straight.
Sometimes I wish I had been one,
secure with something constant.
Often I'd miscalculate
the variables, promises you seemed to make
before saying, 'This isn't what I meant.'
My mistake. Trying to solve problems too thick
for formulas. A permanent failure at artithmetic.
(Yemassee Journal, Vol. XV, No.1, Fall 2007)
Jennifer Juneau
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