Three Poems by Jennifer Fox

These three poems by Jennifer Fox are a navigation across the slick, winding roads of loss and trauma, as one drives back towards the light from the belly of the abyss….

by: Jennifer Fox

Black Hole

I swallow
++++++I swallow my tongue,
swallow my words like
razor blades, weighted words
that sit heavy in the belly.
I swallow
++++++I swallow my tears,
swallow my memories that
go down like Everclear,
swallow my urge to
chase each one with a lit match.
I swallow
++++++I swallow the universe,
swallow light and
shadows, the earth
and suns, never satiated,
moving through constellations
swallowing galaxies, searching
for a gravity like my own
to collide with, completely
++++++++++++++++++swallowed.

Hidden Thimbles

I was
the girl with the book on the end of her nose,
eating vanilla ice cream from plastic cups on wooden spoons,
the one seeking hidden thimbles,
guided by “hot and cold,”
the girl crying-
Stop it! I don’t like this game!
and all things like that.

I was
the girl with large olive-green eyes,
with tears that followed the curve of her neck
onto small shuddering shoulders,
the one with legs as bare as a midnight backroad,
denim skirt up around her hips,
swollen cotton tongue in her mouth,
frozen in a silent scream…

I was
the girl whose words fell like stones in the ocean,
weighted, anchored words,
crushed by waves,
beaten to grains of sand
that fall through the hourglass
as it is turned over and over again.
No, there is no forgetting
that girl,
those stones,
that skirt,
those hidden thimbles…

In the Place Where Wild Things Grow

It is here I picture you
++++++++++++running free
through a field of wildflowers,
a kaleidoscope of colors
++++++++++++hand painted
by Monet himself.
Honey dipped curls dance around you
+++++++++++++++++++++++like a halo
and your laugh
++++++++++++like a melody
to my favorite song.
Here, in my dreams
I get to feel your hand in mine
++++++so small
yet the weight of it,
++++++++++++unmatched.
Here, in the place
++++++where wild things grow,
the things too bright for the world
+++++++++++++++++to contain,
you live under cloudless skies,
where flowers live in
++++++++++++full bloom
in an endless summer,
++++++++++++guarded
from the cruel winter of a mother’s
+++++++++++++++++++++++shattered heart.

Jennifer Fox is a western New York native and is currently earning her MFA in Creative Writing at Lindenwood University, where she works as an editorial assistant for The Lindenwood Review. Her work has been featured in The Write Launch, Disquiet Arts, and Anti-Heroin Chic.