Poetry by Jennifer Browne

John Brighenti CC





On the Difficulty of Saying: Burdock 

              “The most important thing is the thing most easily forgotten.” 1
              Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt

1. 
I say my waiting has become a burr, mean the snag of bracts lodged against skin made tender.
Later, I think an idea is a seed, a seed an idea. A history of wrong words, I meant bur. A bur’s
hooks become proliferation.

2. 
burr (n.)—“rough sound of the letter -r-“…1760, later extended to "northern accented speech" in
general. Possibly the sound of the word is imitative of the speech peculiarity itself, or it was
adapted from one of the senses of bur (q.v.), perhaps from the phrase to have a bur in (one's)
​throat (late 14c.), which was a figure of speech for "feel a choking sensation, huskiness.” 2

3. 
I have feelings I can’t name, can’t bring myself to name.

4. 
Think of breath against the surface of your skin. Whose lungs warm the breathing air? When
you turn to meet their face, what is it you say? 

5. 
I cough to cast the bracts. “Rough sound of the letter -r" becomes a metal rasp, bur becomes
“rough edge on metal” scraping, scraping-edge of the words catch, a rasp in the voice scratches
at the throat. It’s work to name it, to ask.

6. 
The words are reversed, interchangeable. There is so little I know, even when everything seems
to be saying the same thing. Bur, burr. One breath breathes against another. Another’s breath.
There is speech. Where does all the breath go?

7. 
When other layers scrape away, the seed remains. It’s fear that chokes the throat. 

8. 
Burdock, also called bardane. I think of songs caught in the mind, brought forward on breath,
carrying the wind. I’m singing. I’m singing every song you’ve named as one that I should hear. 

9. 
Imagine burdock bracts snagging woolen stockings, colonizing. I think I’ve picked them all apart,
discarded. Days later, they appear again on the same hem. “By 1663, [burdock] was so
widespread in the U.S. that a botanist mistakenly referred to it as a native species.”3

                                                           
1 from Oblique Strategies
2 All etymologies from The Online Etymology Dictionary, etymonline.com
3 Common Burdock (Arctium minus), Ohio Perennial and Biennial Weed Guide.


10.
Speech therapy sessions spent sitting in a tiny chair, padded headphones sliding over ears. /-r/
remains a chimera in the room of my mouth. 

11. 
I only sometimes know the sound of what I say. Sometimes a catch, a stutter stops one word
and makes another. 

12. 
Burdock, also called love leaves. Coarse fleshed. Turn over a leaf and feel its fur.
Heart-shaped bandages for burns, for broken skin. That healing doesn’t come without the
seeds, without the seed-pods, without the scratch of bract. That healing doesn’t come without
the wound. 






On the Difficulty of Saying: Dread         

1.
Skunk cabbage spathes melt snow 
in circles. They rise, size of a heart, 
size of a fist, hooding their flowers. 
I know the spring is nearing, ewes’ 
milk coming in, and still I am afraid. 

2.
Birth tears open a body. 
Birth brings blood and salt. 

3.
Like holding rail-steel track to feel 
the far-off train, flat a palm against 
a surface, tremors of what comes: 
Sap rising in the warming morning, 
birds, a saw, a sturdily-built floor. 
Frost heave, earthworms, a rumble,
marching boots across the ground. 

4.
dread(n.)—from c. 1200, "great fear or apprehension; cause or object of apprehension." As a
past-participle adjective…, "dreaded, frightful," c.1400; later "held in awe" (early 15c.).

5.
I’ll go to anyplace but mass to 
smell the incense of a sacrament. 

6.
Imagine the uses of my hands. 
Stroke foreheads, bandage wounds.
Toss a shattering jar, lit wick flaming. 
I have swung a hammer at a nail. 
I have swung a hammer at a living 
thing, a spit-flecked mouth. Love, 
I have held my open palm against 
the plane of your low belly, have 
felt the perfect warmth of you. 

7. 
What are the words I haven’t said? 
Could I speak them to the corners
of the rooms in which you rest,
small protection for what comes? 

8.
On any day, there is so little
we can do, so much to do. 

9. 
Hold your palm toward what you love, 
and see what comes, quiet for its size. 
Steady yourself through the first breaths, 
brush of whisker / lip, scrape of teeth. 
When you’ve given what you can, broken
it in half and offered everything you carried
there in your abundant pockets, shiver 
at the drying juice, the echo of the apple.

​

​

Jennifer Browne falls in love easily with other people’s dogs. She is the author of American Crow (Beltway Editions) and the poetry chapbooks Before: After, In a Period of Absence, a Lake, whisper song, and The Salt of the Geologic World. Find more of her work at linktr.ee/jenniferabrowne. 




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