Poetry by Jen Rouse

       Alex Naanou CC



In Metal, Wax, & Bone
#1

I bent the metal of your mouth
to my mouth. Filled the cavernous
emptiness with clouds. What you expect
from me is bent in my mouth and
burning. Metal. When I am most
ill, it paints my tongue in
ashes. Your mouth is
not allowed here. Bent, the metal
I make of you is twisted—the storm
of you in every song. Leaves me
metal. O what shape? What
mouth-of-metal you would stay
beside me? Nothing becomes
the metal of me—no shimmering
lake, no Saturn on a stick, no
grown-from-home heart, and
I hang in the absence,
as you take every mouth
not mine and metal.

#2

When she dresses you with
bits of hair and tattered felt,
a quick blood kiss across
the curve where lips
should meet, wax doll of
featureless face, what
does an eternal scream
feel like when no
one hears you? When no
heart beats inside your
haunted breast?

Wax doll: the pins, the pins,
the pins. My god. The pins.

How she holds you to
the flame, and small bits
of you melt on her fingers.

How she brushes
you away, like you were never
there to begin with.

#3

Maybe I made you up. Maybe these
bones were always wrong. No
matter. I have finished carrying
you. Myth. Muse. And for so long.
I will give each bone back. Pluck
the skin like feathers and pull
them through. Because the words
I don’t want you near me
are never quite enough. Let
me unhinge each vertebrae,
a small and perfect stack, from
burn to powder in your palm.

​

Easter

Because you’ve run this fever like a race every night for weeks now—you think something must
​give—you think you must either walk into or out of this life completely.

Into—like Adrienne Rich’s floating love poem, thundering in your lover’s mouth
              a rhythm             a whole delicious chorus           again     come again
              this is the abandonment you end—scream, Beauty, want me
              Stay!

Out of—Like Edna Pontellier    her awakening a drowning—sweet sea
              anemone opening, closing                           Chopin’s inspired Creole passions         meeting grave
after watery grave—literature repeats itself in Ophelia
              form        no matter your desire to see it stop and smell you differently.

Your hair sweat-knotted on the pillow—your voice still somewhere in Ireland folding its legs around
the first girl—She said to her fiancée from the phone booth, I feel something.    You didn’t know,
laughed when she shaved her head,
bought you vodka sours, put you drunk so drunk to bed, loved you, at least for those few hours.

Now you simply want a cool spot on the sheets—a glass of water—You don’t want to think about
the last three years—the shudders of lifeless breath—like Poe came in while you slept, mortared a
wall of bricks to your chest—You are not strong enough to see who is casked inside, or even
worse—who is kept out.

Eyes glassy with grief and illness, together like the moon and tide—An empty bed seems license to
be listless—or you could take it all in stride
                —or you could long just a while longer for someone to truly understand those strides--
She might be worth it—if she is quiet--
if she absorbs fever like a damp cloth—if her sleep
is soft—and her need.    You might stay for that—You might not.
At the end of the book, the water bleeds.

​


Telling the Therapist Good-bye

After a while, wisdom does not matter--
in the wake of so many small sacrifices,
infinite sadness.  The deepest cut you talked
me through—a voice in tender contrast
to the jagged leaps, dives of smashed glass,
blood like a bright sangria catching
on the edges of what your words fell through.

Sometimes words are all I have to give,
words like diamonds    caviar     real fur coats--
such weighty indulgences, bereft gifts
you will soon stop unwrapping, having
had enough of the endless verb-kiss.

So what will we speak of when
the silence ends—death and love already wrung out.
Or will it just be me                       wringing
my hands in your mailbox                           twirling my keys
on your answering machine.     Never
again my frantic eyes to read    or the watching
of your fingers twisting strands of hair,
your long, booted leg kicking quickly
when I say suicide sweetly.  How have we
gone on like this?      And what
have you noticed?            A miserably
triumphant Morse code.

​


Summer Crush  

You are all my triggers--
old, lovely, an entertainer--
my drag queen shrink. I haven’t looked into
your eyes for weeks. Summer has stolen
you anyway—sun-fucked and drunk
on a backlit stage. And you are Joplin
or the luscious Grace Slick. You are the girl
who never touches down.

So many yous I’ve loved through summers
like this, a tangle of tawny legs, beer
cans telling tales in the driveway, fingers
lingering on light switches, and secret cigarettes
on boat decks. There are only so many ways
to go down to the river.

Maybe this year I’ll choose a man instead,
one who makes moonshine in his basement
and makes me do something as simple as
smile. Some nights when we’re both alone,
he sends me a midnight snack.

Anything to wake from dreaming
of your hand slowly rubbing my back
in something less than sobs. ​

Jen Rouse is the Director of the Center for Teaching and Learning at Cornell College. Her poems have appeared in Poetry, Gulf Stream, Parentheses, Cleaver, Up the Staircase, Southern Florida Poetry Journal, and elsewhere. She was named a finalist for the Mississippi Review 2018 Prize Issue. Rouse is a two-time finalist for the Charlotte Mew Prize with Headmistress Press. Her first chapbook with HP is Acid and Tender, and her forthcoming book is CAKE. The Poetry Annals published her micro chap, Before Vanishing. And Riding with Anne Sexton, Rouse’s second chapbook, is recently out from Bone & Ink Press in collaboration with dancing girl press. Find her at jen-rouse.com and on Twitter @jrouse.  

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