Jeanne Henry
EVIDENCE OF IRRECONCILABLE DIFFERENCES
You will live inside a pattern and I will live inside a picture.You will drink rainwater and I will drink rust from the farmhousethat fell down not for lack of love but for lack of ability to bringfortune up to the speed in which wind and rain and thunderstormstear down pieces until there are no more pieces and how time crawlsand corrupts our hearts like termites inside the wood until there is noteven the smallest splinter of stamina to hold the frame steady, as ifthe shaking body knows what the head thinks—that collapse is inevitableand the only defense is to be sure to knock down whatever is left—toend the waiting, but the worst part will be giving peace to the neighborsthat gossiped about the decay of a once charming structure. And if oneday we want evidence of home existing in the now barren land of burntgrass and ash, we will have to reach inside our minds for this effigy,which only you or I can recall building at all. In court, they’ll call this:hearsay. GOODYBE, NEW YORK Thelong dreamspit and fast walk.Whatever sense of whatseemed possible is now delivered intocities that still exist in your shitty perspectiveof pleasant life lost in an abandoned corner of blackgum & human piss. Thin silvers of sunshine through tall buildings as yourshadow on a cracked sidewalk moves again to the jam-racket and smoke margin of lunch. Dog-eared melancholy rolling smiles flat and pictures of healthdevouring egos into the improbable danger of meetingsomeone that knew you when escape was climbingelm trees and the possibility to the top was awide-eyed dare of legs and feet to believethat towns were a small & sterile thing that didn't grow hard rootsinside you when you couldbe nobody more than youwanted in each cityapartment that wasa tree with adifferentstoop. MATCH I burned our last hopeon a dollar store Jesuscandle. I drank lightdown with Whiskey &no one else. A flickerand done: this is the last,this is finally it. Absolutesilence broken on a whimof debt. Jeanne Henry is a poet and is co-editor at Unmanned Press. She currently calls New York City home.
You will live inside a pattern and I will live inside a picture.You will drink rainwater and I will drink rust from the farmhousethat fell down not for lack of love but for lack of ability to bringfortune up to the speed in which wind and rain and thunderstormstear down pieces until there are no more pieces and how time crawlsand corrupts our hearts like termites inside the wood until there is noteven the smallest splinter of stamina to hold the frame steady, as ifthe shaking body knows what the head thinks—that collapse is inevitableand the only defense is to be sure to knock down whatever is left—toend the waiting, but the worst part will be giving peace to the neighborsthat gossiped about the decay of a once charming structure. And if oneday we want evidence of home existing in the now barren land of burntgrass and ash, we will have to reach inside our minds for this effigy,which only you or I can recall building at all. In court, they’ll call this:hearsay. GOODYBE, NEW YORK Thelong dreamspit and fast walk.Whatever sense of whatseemed possible is now delivered intocities that still exist in your shitty perspectiveof pleasant life lost in an abandoned corner of blackgum & human piss. Thin silvers of sunshine through tall buildings as yourshadow on a cracked sidewalk moves again to the jam-racket and smoke margin of lunch. Dog-eared melancholy rolling smiles flat and pictures of healthdevouring egos into the improbable danger of meetingsomeone that knew you when escape was climbingelm trees and the possibility to the top was awide-eyed dare of legs and feet to believethat towns were a small & sterile thing that didn't grow hard rootsinside you when you couldbe nobody more than youwanted in each cityapartment that wasa tree with adifferentstoop. MATCH I burned our last hopeon a dollar store Jesuscandle. I drank lightdown with Whiskey &no one else. A flickerand done: this is the last,this is finally it. Absolutesilence broken on a whimof debt. Jeanne Henry is a poet and is co-editor at Unmanned Press. She currently calls New York City home.