lets get this one thing straight.

The sound of wind chimes late at night on Grant's trail is not creepy.

I wont let myself be afraid of those small tinkering sounds,
the little dinks and clasps
of skeleton fairies
bumping into tin cans
before it rains.
So no- I'm not afraid
even though the sound is building with my speed,
a crescendo that will end when my ankles wear out.

feels good dead.

I love hearing you dismiss me
at four in the morning.
Dull and pukey,
I mumble something you could never buy.


Hearing that sharp-knife sentence
about how someones waiting,
and you have to go,
is cold and comforting
like the bathroom floor:
cold tile on my face.

I'm bored.

While watching the tv turn itself on and off,

I make matters out of my own hands.

Like a burn on my tongue

I say your name.

effortless

i step over the mirrors

that lay on my bedroom floor

facing up like pools of glass in the carpet.

i never hung them because 

i dont like nails

still, i like luck, and never misstep:

these next seven years are gonna be big. 

the patron god of little boys on playgrounds 

hides up on my ceiling, 

smiling.

jackie said write when i said eat.

The scissors were not sharp

and the table not level

when you cut me out of your life.

This is how it felt:

like someone took a paper crane and tried to make it into a paper snowflake; cutting all sorts of holes that would never be symmetrical when it opens up. I'm opened up. 

We didn't even kiss.

good morning.

This morning I woke up when a sparrow flew into my face. It was a little bird, that had come in through the chimney. She had been stuck in our house for a while, I learned. A dear baby. Didn't quite get glass. She flapped about our living room last night, slept in our house plant, and then while looking for light this morning, charged my face.

Did I really scream? Am I actually the sort of person who throws the sheets over her head? Runs naked downstairs to the kitchen? Calls her dad?

Later, when the plan was fully constructed- the window flung open and all of us in our correct positions, I loved my family.

The Epilogue

We found ourselves under that bridge,

crammed in the corner with our knees bent,

keeping cold.

Graffiti crawled all around us.

I watched you walk the tracks

until you were out of my sight.

I saw a branch with some yellow leaves and sat still.

I'm so sorry.

I had to kiss you when the train went by.

Afterwards,

your cigarette took a stylistic fall from grace-

our firework.

You believed in magic, momentarily.

It was like a light was going off in my head;

A slow red flash.

I write poetry for my poetry writing class.

Cleaning My Room 

I pick my way through 

layers of debris ,

find magnetic poetry pieces.

Pound. Chrysalis. Extract.

Here is that note from my mother

half crumpled next to the underwear

still upturned in my jeans.

the broken earring 

next to the receipt from the book  store

It seems I wore purple last Wednesday.

Pausing, I see that

my carpet is, in fact, beige

and capable of being

startlingly bare.

Windows

I gaze at each glass face

of the cherubim seraphim, 

their childish eyes

two shards of bright blue

catching light in adoration.

The sharp angle of their

eternally outstretched arms

is rigid.

Their small wings

flutter pointlessly-

opaque white tips, 

so far from feathers,

better for birds than fat babies

Their mortar mouths are all loving, 

and not knowing. 

But I want Michael, 

swinging his flaming sword

with a flourish and a roar,

playing poker with Gabe on Saturday nights, 

blowing smoke rings from his heavenly cigar;

forming clouds.

Strangers

Today I met a brain

in between the shelves

at the library.

We talked innocently

and liked each other instantly

I'll be fine.

Late Afternoon in Powder Valley

The paved trail breaks through this forest

like a pencil line scribbled across 

a sheet of grainy paper.

A spider stands.

I inspect her perfect tangles

the sheer dotted net, detected only in 

the ray of sunlight

that is bending off my glasses.

Nearby, a tree has given itself over

to soft moss, and fungus 

that wraps around its trunk 

like a lace collar.

It reminds me of me.

I adorn myself, talk too much

pick words apart 

like sunflower seeds between my teeth

in this quiet place.

Coming Home Late

In the hour between night and morning

I arrive to my dark house

the front door swings open, not inviting. 

The night is intermingling with my living room

the air is charged.

Locking the faulty bolt, 

I switch on each light

drag my hands against the walls

clutch my car keys.

With a sigh.

I pet the dog, 

and laugh without an audience.  

Still,

I think I'll lock my bedroom door tonight,

scoop up my small sister,

let her her sleep beneath my arm.

Riding Bikes with Justin

 

It's not like they say,

this isnt coming easy.

There is no flashbulb childhood memory

of my father pushing me down a grassy hill;

no thrill of rememberence.

 

Justin glides on my left,

effortlessly.

His shoes are clipped into the pedals.

 

I gently lift my grip away

from the handle bars.

 

An hour later, he is a distant flashing light.

I'm tired and should turn back.

But I've never felt so self-propelled,

and I would follow him anywhere.

 

 

 

This Road Trip was so Carefully Planned

 

An anthology of mixed CDs

rests on the dashboard.

A glare from the windshield angles itself

towards the cooler full of iced coffee.

 

I think back to that gas station,

the long walk to you took to find a place to smoke,

while I breathed in sweet gasoline

and bought a map we haven't dared to unfold.

 

We were good at not talking.

We spent all those nights

practicing sitting still

and watching the world go by--

on your couch.

 

I guess its just funny

how we have no idea

where we're going.

Because I was tired of lying in bed alone.

I want to lay in bed with Charlie and leave whale noises on Justin's answering machine and look at softer world comics and have him be above them.

I want to lay in bed with Maria with all these grand plans for talking, so we could end up sleeping. I want to lay little ice cubes and aloe all over her back when she gets sunburned and wake up in the morning and take our time tanning topless in the yard anyway.


I want to lay in bed with Becca and listen to her talk about her sims, webkinz, friends, play practice, show choir, how her hair never stays curled, how she wants Julie to come home and I just hold her and let her feel small and wish she was smaller and wish I was smaller and mutter "Me too, baby".

Jenn Dean II

I do not need you on rainy days.
The nights I feel lonely,
the mornings where tears come before breakfast.

It is the beautiful moments of my life,
the late night bike rides
air that smells like a season
friends smiling near piles of dead leaves

when I want to cut you carefully out
of your Ithaca postcard back drop,
with tiny sharp scissors
and paste you back into my life.

Losing your sun glasses. (for Eddie)

Distracted by the yellow leaves,
all soft and ginko on the ground at the park,
I got up to leave and left
your sun glasses behind.

I wasn't being careless, its just,
I never plan my exits.
I drift out of my scene when the wind takes me,
like a yellow leaf.

Now I think of you,
in the library,
flinging something precious into my hands
and how I protested
and how I told you so,
how the sun gets in my eyes.

Annie Dillard said that each day is a god.

The god of today is a child, looking out the window at November and rushing to be let out, to touch and crackle along sidewalks, examine fallen pumpkins, to twitter.

There is a fusion of life and death in this day's morning, as there is in all mornings when the god is young and the sun still trying to rise, and we praise him into our darker coffees, with our thicker sweaters we sing hosanna. We live among the dead leaves. We live and we breathe until our lungs hurt. We live and think this child god is forever, or ages as slowly as we do, we live like afternoon will never come. We love autumn in the freshest of ways.

But we breathe in and forget, we breathe out and the air isn't quite as fresh, already, we feel complacent, settled, bored, ready for the first snow to come this evening and melt greenly tomorrow morning.

We confuse god for Thomas Kincaid, and exchange that which is beautiful for that which is syrupy, picturesque, and gilded. I would rather eat a grainy apple than a golden one, all cold and metallic-- rock salt between my teeth. May November 2nd never come.

Alpha Bravo Charlie

We must have looked silly, on that hill,

when the jogger glanced up and saw our shapes converging.

Me, ankle deep in leporiphobia 

you, obscured by a plume of red balloons,

touching outlines for a moment in the weak sunlight

that was still picking its dress hem up over the dirty river.

I will always wonder if the man in the control room

watching the small TV screens, drinking his coffee, muttering,

paused somewhere in the process of calling the police

to watch the red float away and smile at us kissing.

Do you think the man in the mustache 

will tell anyone? In hushed tones, over a radio, 

twirling his stick over his hand?

"India Tango    Whiskey Alpha Sierra

Bravo Echo Alpha Uniform Tango India Foxtrot Uniform Lima"

Jenn Dean

I

Nodding as he talks to me, thinking instead of
the cat in the parking lot, my feet getting colder,
I hear a clip like this:
"...He went to Cornell or some crazy fancy shit like that,"
and I think:
yeah.
Crazy. Fancy. Shitty.

II

Dancing at the indie show, I remember
the two of us converging on Rea,
smiles out like hands. Grabbing, reaching.

We wouldn't waste time on getting others to dance now.
That's a sign we've grown.

III

Under little lights from above
and deep nights full of friends love
we talk of coffee and other philosophies.
Privately, things could be better
but out loud its almost enough.

IV

Its ok, that I wear your clothes.
Its not ok, how I secretly plan to never give them back.

V

We both have two sisters.
I think this works though,
you and me. Letting our feet drag behind the boat
loving our family on the shore,
waving.

VI

Christmas is going to go like this:
I'll introduce you to some people
let them like me more off your charm, then
lay in your bed, laughing, eating all your hummus,
doing nothing
like good friends should.

A blog

Like a little notebook, only bigger.