Three Poems by Jennifer Hernandez

Unaccompanied Minor
 
If you go before, my lamb –
border dust, metallic
screech&crash, needles
full of poison, virus,
malignancy, gunshot –
my lamentations will spill
with vowels. I will speak
a new-old dialect, elongate
my longing, a flicker
like tiny soft fingers on my skin,
a minor chord that resonates deep
within the hollow organ of my body,
you the antistrophe to my strophe.
 
 


Abscission
 
Literally, to cut.
See: Scissors. But leaves
fall on account of stress,
like my hair. I’m deciduous,
protect myself by shedding
what’s extraneous. Skin.
Bad boyfriends. I shut down
to guard my core. Fractures
speed release, conserve energy
that I can reabsorb, carry
to my roots, store for later,
my fallen leaves not wasted.
Decay feeds life.
 
 
 

The Huntress
 
You lie there prone,
nothing concealed.
I glass your terrain,
spy jagged wisps of
exhaustion rise like
spines of cacti.
Have I spooked
you yet? Let me
crabwalk across
your hips, my soft
muzzle aimed
at the crosshairs
of your heart.

​

Bio: Jennifer Hernandez lives in Minnesota where she works with students from immigrant families and writes poetry, flash, and creative non-fiction. She has performed her writing at a non-profit garage, a taxidermy-filled bike shop, and in the kitchen for her children. Her recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in Dying Dahlia Review, Mothers Always Write and New Verse News, as well as  Bird Float, Tree Song (Silverton Books), A Prince Tribute (Yellow Chair Press) and Write Like You’re Alive (Zoetic Press).

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