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One Poem by Jenny Morse

When she sees lines, she spins them

In the border of her room, a wheel. 
Skia leans into its pine burls. When light
twines the mist around spindled branches
all her lonely moments become an epilogue. 
She cannot speak through eternity: 
black holes stretch bodies
                                                  into spun glass.

At this hour, the cloth hushes
in its beauty. Awake, Skia spins
a cloak of sediment to protect her.
Her throat mottles with prints. She captures
oranges, serpentine reeds, roots of willows curled
along the banks, leaves like turned pages.

She sees the landscape forced to an arrangement,
quilted squares, patterns like boxes, like bricks.
There are no squares in nature.
                                                           This is how we know we built it.

One whole world—
                                         outside, squares.
                                         inside, an apple.

 

 

 

Jenny Morse is currently a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Illinois – Chicago and an instructor at Colorado State University. Her poetry has been published or is forthcoming in Notre Dame ReviewWilderness HouseQuiddity, and Yemassee. Her critical work has appeared in SeismopoliteThe Montreal ReviewThe Ofi Press, and Journal of Contemporary Thought.

Colored thread in needle photo courtesy Shutterstock.