Poetry By Jane Ann Fuller

       Dave Cowley CC




DEAR YOUNG WOMAN-SELF

I made pork chops again tonight     chocolate pudding   and picked
rosemary   right now a wolf moon rubs against 
the window     listen      if I  had known winter comes insidious
as rust  in the body’s undercarriage   stalled 
on the hills of good-bye-ing    maybe I wouldn't confuse you
with my daughter   wouldn’t be asking  who are you now
it’s too late to erase  who  you will    become  finally
I bought myself    a high-tech telescope    I think 
I  see  three-billion-year-old   icecaps on the moon’s craters   
maybe it’s an omen   how things blur
inches      two-hundred-thousand miles  eleven light years  from here   
how time   finger-locks with regret       until there's nothing 
but a taste for pork   and chocolate





​I DRAW THE TAME NEGATIVE THINKING CARD FROM THE EMPATH ORACLE DECK
​DURING THE MINDFULNESS RETREAT AND FORGET TO PUT IT BACK

I never was in love
with Negative Thinking, it was more a series of one night stands,
working late in the dimly lit conference rooms 
of my brain, sharing a cigarette in the parking lot, coffee
and a cruller in the basement of Christ The King,
darkness for darkness in the locker room showers 
at the community center natatorium—her face painted 
like a bird, eyes chalked in warrior white, 
hair wild as wings at her shoulders, 
décolletage shimmering with purple rocailles 
and silver, the whole of her wincing 
in ecstasy or cinematic pain, I stuffed her 
inadvertently into my lap top case 
after a class on Ayurveda and the perfectionist mind, 
how not to judge
what we've become, free 
with who we are regardless 
I had no idea I lack testosterone 
or that peppermint oil will relax 
spasms in my neck but only enteric coated 
capsules work. Otherwise I might get GERD. 
I love these workshops--
how the women bring books to trade, Chopra’s Seven 
Spiritual Laws of Success. Tolle’s The New Earth,
Gilbert’s Big Magic. And clothes to swap, 
scarves and sweaters worn like lovers 
long past their best but willing 
to keep us warm, or wear us out 
on the street to prove how generous 
our friends, our retro taste. Teacher 
reminds us not to compare our insides 
with others’outsides, which is good advice since 
this morning’s frost sticks to everything like bad luck.

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Jane Ann Fuller's Half-Life (Sheila-Na-Gig, 2021) was a finalist for the National Indie Excellence Awards. Her poems appear On the Seawall, in One Art, Main Street Rag, Women Speak, Atticus Review, Shenandoah, 
B O D Y, All We Know of Pleasure: Erotic Poetry by Women, Project Hope (Center for Victims of Torture) and elsewhere, and work is forthcoming in Calyx and Blue Earth Review.