Poetry |

“Coronae”

Coronae

 

Four times before nightfall, a hummingbird visits the empty crown

feeder that sways from a beam under the porch. There is no sugar

in the house, and striped grey moths leave halos of blood-red

droppings on the edges of window screens, on silk curtains, on my pillow

while I sleep. They are powdery and tough to catch. I trap one

between my fingers, shove a door open for release as it wets my hand

with a pungent pheromone that won’t wash off.  From my room, I watch

online as men in Florida throw dollar bills out the sunroof of a car, crowds

hazardously spooling and scrambling. A few days later, George Floyd’s final

words float on a banner through the New York sky: O is a thin-ringed

empty planet. O is a nimbus of torture around a bubble of grief.

White ranunculus open in glazed green planters where I pressed the bulbs

down into moist potting soil a few months ago. A late forcing for an early

spring bloom, the flowers start as balled fists then unfurl like peonies

in a ceremonious burst revealing coronae velvet as midnight void of moon.

The shape of the circle never lets you out.

Contributor
Elizabeth Jacobson

Elizabeth Jacobson was the fifth Poet Laureate of Santa Fe, New Mexico and an Academy of American Poets 2020 Laureate Fellow.  Her most recent book, Not into the Blossoms and Not into the Air, was awarded the New Measure Poetry Prize, selected by Marianne Boruch (Free Verse Editions/Parlor Press, 2019), and the 2019 New Mexico-Arizona Book Award for both New Mexico Poetry and Best New Mexico Book. Her other books include Her Knees Pulled In (Tres Chicas Books, 2012), two chapbooks from Dancing Girl Press, Are the Children Make Believe? (2017) and A Brown Stone (2015), and Everything Feels Recent When You’re Far AwayPoetry and Art from Santa Fe Youth During the Pandemic (2021), which she co-edited. Her work has been supported by grants from the Witter Bynner Foundation for Poetry, New Mexico Arts, and the Academy of American Poets. Elizabeth is the Reviews Editor for the on-line literary journal Terrain.org. Visit her Link Tree account at: https://linktr.ee/ElizabethJacobson

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