Poetry By Christine Jackson

Warren LeMay CC




Hard Winter in Rooster Town

After our tragic autumn, we  
seek solace by moving. 
The warmest space in the crumbling
farmhouse is an east bedroom above  
the woodstove. Or so we think. 
The ancient stove makes constant 
demands. Another hungry infant. 
Each night we bend close to check 
its weak warm breath. 
 
On some mornings, sunrise 
gleams into our east bedroom. 
Nightmares stir memories. I need
a pillow to cover my face. 

Corrugated ice covers the yard
except for one shoot of rye grass. 
It hurts as I watch it struggle, bent 
and broken into this frozen universe.  

A rooster holds sway in the field out back.   
Its screech blusters over chicken coops,  
gusts through the ruined barn, sending
a shudder through the house.
 
We take supper in town, 
searching for kind hearts
only to find more roosters. 
Local toughs from a lost cosmos 
swill beer, filling Mac’s clam shack  
with brag and swagger after   
racing brash engines across the moon. 
  
If Earth listens to God,
the horizon bends an ear
into the screech of a rooster.

​


​Christine Jackson is originally from New England, now living in South Florida. Her poems have appeared in THE EKPHRASTIC REVIEW, VERSE-VIRTUAL, SOUTH FLORIDA POETRY JOURNAL, CHAMELEON CHIMERA, and WITCHERY THE PLACE FOR E POEMS.