When the planets turned ready in slow-time abeyance for a rendition of lives to clash, maybe Cherokee man or colonial long hunter, maybe English renegade, or would-be farmer plunging his hands in black dirt to tease out a weed’s root system, or maybe highland warrior who puts his tired head to his suffering wife’s breast [...]
Tagged Jenny Benjamin-Smith, poetryI can divine these brambles. Or these gnarled flowers at my feet. They obscure my heels as I float on yellow horizons. Tip the diagonal of my arms into the numbers of years set down like dust. I can, you see, lead you somewhere, over rock and highland green. I can conjure stone from earth [...]
Tagged poetryDear Jack-Be-Nimble, The sky is a particular gray-blue today, and it makes me think of you. Your slate eyes. Venice is, well, all masks and gondolas; I love and need it as I do my own internal organs that I picture crammed to fatal dimensions from a corset as if I were some courtesan fleeing [...]
Tagged Jenny Benjamin-Smith, postcard, proseWitnessed an informal poll with black middle school boys about whether or not they can control their erections. Let me back track. I teach at a small school that serves students who have been reassigned from Milwaukee Public Schools because of bad behavior. These behaviors range from use of drugs or alcohol, sex in school, [...]
Tagged Jenny Benjamin-SmithWhen we huddle closely in our bed, the night shadows bleed tricks upon the walls, and we, wet flesh, sighs, and twists that vanish in the mist of night and all its ghoulish subjects, are we more than what we keep? No more soul than silver, temporal and quick. Do the dead count our blessings [...]
Tagged Jenny Benjamin-SmithYou will remember that this world will not last. You will remember that I’m the large sunny rock to lie upon. Blend into me in case the world is too large. You aren’t even listening. Except to your own thoughts about noise and food. I am trying to explain the world to you. You will [...]
Tagged Jenny Benjamin-Smith