Jennifer Moore
Door
And what if the mind doesn’t have an eye?
If instead the mind has a mouth,
teeth gnawing unchewable cud,
forever mulling the perpetual X.
What’s spat is a thought. It lands in the grass.
Then the mind moves on. A finger taps a table;
somebody opens a door.
If the eye that wants to see is blind,
the brain’s not a cinema, it’s a taste test―
hint of wood and almonds,
dill, pepper, smoke;
your father not a visage but a voice
low and hollow, a bellows on the fire,
then a lock of hair in a fist felt by nails―
not the shape of a shoe horn,
but the scent of unbearable cedar
slamming the door shut.
Jennifer Moore was born and raised in Seattle. She is the author of The Veronica Maneuver (Akron, 2015) and a forthcoming chapbook, Imaginary Weather (Hermeneutic Chaos, 2017). Her poems have been published in DIAGRAM, Best New Poets, The Cincinnati Review, Barrow Street, and elsewhere. An assistant professor of creative writing at Ohio Northern University, she lives in Bowling Green, Ohio. More information can be found at jenmoorepoet.com.
Return to July 2017 Edition
And what if the mind doesn’t have an eye?
If instead the mind has a mouth,
teeth gnawing unchewable cud,
forever mulling the perpetual X.
What’s spat is a thought. It lands in the grass.
Then the mind moves on. A finger taps a table;
somebody opens a door.
If the eye that wants to see is blind,
the brain’s not a cinema, it’s a taste test―
hint of wood and almonds,
dill, pepper, smoke;
your father not a visage but a voice
low and hollow, a bellows on the fire,
then a lock of hair in a fist felt by nails―
not the shape of a shoe horn,
but the scent of unbearable cedar
slamming the door shut.
Jennifer Moore was born and raised in Seattle. She is the author of The Veronica Maneuver (Akron, 2015) and a forthcoming chapbook, Imaginary Weather (Hermeneutic Chaos, 2017). Her poems have been published in DIAGRAM, Best New Poets, The Cincinnati Review, Barrow Street, and elsewhere. An assistant professor of creative writing at Ohio Northern University, she lives in Bowling Green, Ohio. More information can be found at jenmoorepoet.com.
Return to July 2017 Edition