Poetry Suite by Emily Jaeger
“I’ve cut
another country out of my map, the ocean
gallops in”
Poetry by Emily Jaeger
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Besshø
I asked for a kiss
and you gave me
a mountain
in Norway. We’ve had stranger
miscommunications.
I asked for a kiss once
and you poured me a cup
of molten mercury.
We made love
with it on our hands,
then sat and watched
a liquid grow solid,
roll across the floor
in fat silver bubbles.
The mercury
couldn’t be gathered
up like crooning
Flubber or tempted
like flatworms to a kidney,
monarchs to rancid meat.
Another misunderstanding.
I asked for a mountain
in Norway and you gave me
a volume of Japanese poetry,
a crater from Mercury,
and a gift
certificate to a stereotypically
schmaltzy sushi
place in Boston (cream
cheese sushi is not a thing).
Your hands were very full
and your eyes
looked tired.
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Re: Lesbians in Minsk—To Ana
I wasn’t mad at you. It was the first time
you talked about Minsk beyond the clean streets
or learning to swim: flung from the edge
of a pole into the deep end.
I saw your city: rapt angles and winter.
A countryside of hard workers in bright,
unfitting clothes. Judged by generosity.
Not necessarily xenial, but the kind
who would want to protect you
when they said Aspartame makes you fat,
eat real sugar. Are you afraid
that you still believe what your mother
believes—that you can’t just scrape it
off like the residue of pepper from your cold hands?
I’m telling you it’s not personal.
Each time I name myself—ta-da—I’ve cut
another country out of my map, the ocean
gallops in thankful for this new hole.
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Broken Axes
I am not used to my wife
here every day, inside
my cunt. I don’t want her
fingers asking me questions
I’m not deep enough
or wide enough to answer.
When she leaves for work,
I return to the smell
of myself on the old sheets,
scrape last night’s
congealed Brussels
sprouts from a tight-lidded
pan. Let’s go to the museum
like Frank O’Hara and kiss
in the Chinese garden.
A calligraphed poem
hangs untranslated:
Poem Titled ‘Broken Axes,’
letters ragged, crackling
across the page like how
you’d touch me in a stall
if I told you to.
Broken by the blade?
Or by the stem? Forever
or until replaced?
In our apartment,
a pile of things to replace:
the milk frother won’t froth,
the French Press arrived
in six jagged pieces.
I ride across the city,
a dinged knife
balanced on my lap.
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Practiced Hand
Step 8 is making amends, so you try. You write me in your curved hand
the way you wrote our shared grandmother one thousand letters
to pass the interminable time or meet time’s empty eye.
You say only one year left and you are practiced
at prison. They wouldn’t tell me what you mainlined
or dabbed. Our grandfather died
and you disappeared the next day in your mother’s car.
A tennis bracelet, cash from Gram’s drawer palmed.
You say, cousin, write me back.
Send books of stamps and only ten cards at a time.
I think, first I’ll write my brothers and parents,
I’ll double my old stamps like praying hands.
You’re not my sister. The last time we talked I was two
and you drew me a Lil’ Tyke house free-hand.
Now the list of cousins I don’t speak to is longer than the list of cousins
I see and you’ve sorted me out: the sympathetic poet from the engineers.
Manipulation, you’re old hand. You just couldn’t trick the teller when you signed
the check: Give me whut's in your till now I got a gun let me see both hands.
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Header image courtesy of Lindsey Price. To view her Artist Feature, go here.
Emily Jaeger is the author of the chapbook The Evolution of Parasites (Sibling Rivalry Press) illustrated by Robin Levine. Her poems have appeared in Four Way Review, TriQuarterly, and The Offing among others. After completing her MFA at UMass Boston, Emily will be the 2017/2018 Olive B. O'Connor Fellow in Poetry at Colgate University. She has also received fellowships from Literary Lambda, TENT, the New York State Summer Writers Institute, and an Academy of American Poet's Prize.