Poetry by Jennifer Maloney

      Tim Vrtiska CC




​Sacred

In the bookstore parking lot two weeks after I tell him no I just want to be friends he follows me to my car screaming words that when I repeat them    try to tell someone else    don’t sound threatening at all oh HI oh HELLO oh HI JENN oh IT’S SO GOOD TO SEE YOU JENN oh DON’T GO Jenn where are you GOING why are you RUNNING AWAY? and the whole time 
I have my keys in my hand and I’m looking around     for someone     anyone     I know but there’s no one     they’re all in the bookstore and I’m backing up     scrabbling     for the car door then I manage to open it     try     to slide in     still facing him and he strides     right up     to the door of the car pushes against it and
I can’t breathe     I can’t move 
and he’s staring at me not blinking     grinning     sweating breathing     heavy     pushing pushing my body squeezing     tighter     there’s no air and he says don’t run away     Jenn no one’s gonna hurt     you why would anyone hurt     you? You have so many FRIENDS and on the word     friends     he shoves     the door so hard that when I look     at my body 
my chest     my breasts 
the next day there is an inverted v-shaped mark an upside-down check mark the imprint left by the corner of the car door like the thick slash of a purple sharpie running vertically between my sternum and the rise of my left breast and then he laughs. He looks into my eyes and laughs. And then he steps     away with his hands in the air like     I never touched you bitch     and I get in my car and lock all my doors and shake and shake     and drive home. On the phone 
the bored police officer says if he’s not a former romantic partner we can’t help you. I text my friend at the store and he doesn’t respond     for two days     and when he does     he says     he needs help not abandonment    I don’t feel right banning him and it’s been 
six years now. I still go there sometimes 
not at night     not alone 
but it’s where my friends hang out and just now I saw the advertising     for the zenn-y little poetry group he leads there they call it a journey of sacred community and it’s hard     when you finally understand what you are     and what you’re not

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Cousinweed

Nobody cared how old I was, because I was a cousin, wasn’t I, and fit just fine on the dead-end rail digging into my bony ass under my cut-offs. We passed that joint and they told me about boys at Jones Beach, the way to roll up your skirt so the nuns wouldn’t catch you, how to steal sips of communion wine and I kept my mouth shut—silence, my part of the spell. They were tall, and beautiful, like the Kennedy’s—straight teeth, shining hair, shining futures, somehow special in a way I couldn’t be because, though I was a cousin (wasn’t I?), I wasn’t blood—made instead from buck teeth, split ends and small, foreign bones. Still, we shared that weed, underhanding a bottle, leaning against the garage, shrinking into the corner where the stinking wisteria climbed the trellis, sneaking glances up the street as they passed stories back and forth about older boyfriends with cars, about what to do with their hands, knees, backseats, black leather jackets, cheap beer. We toked, they talked—college visits, bras, dress fittings—standing on the dais, arms spread like wings, turning like models, like Miss America—the Macy’s seamstress humming, chatting around a mouthful of pins while their mother, my Aunt Ronnie, watched and straightened hems and smiled at them in the mirror—we smoked that joint in the summer dust, dusk beginning to peep and chirrup and croak, mosquitoes diving, dopplering around our ears, internal clocks clocking the time, my cousins (?) heading back to Grandma’s house and their lives—blue eyeshadow, The Russian Tea Room, boys and beaches. I stayed. Stood in the driveway for another minute, hiding the empty in the tall grass near the garage as the sun bled out over the dead-end rail and tiny white stars, bright as pebbles in a Hansel-and-Gretel world, glittered. Remembering a morning when Aunt Ronnie smoothed the fuzz of my bangs, dusted my shoulders, smiling into the mirror. Where did you come from, I wonder? she mused aloud, brushing a crumb from my cheek, her fingers soft, so soft.




Jennifer Maloney writes poetry and fiction; find her work in Synkroniciti Magazine, The Courtship of Winds, Literally Stories and many other publications. She is the author of Evidence of Fire, Poems and Stories (Clare Songbirds, 2023) and Don't Let God Know You are Singing (Before Your Quiet Eyes Publishing, 2024). Jennifer is also a parent, a partner, and a very lucky friend, and she is grateful, for all of it, every day.
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