Thrush Poetry Journal
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Jenny Della Santa
​

The Test Confirms You Are Post Menopausal
 
In the houses of this city 
where you have left 
other selves
you wear your old clothes
 
Sometimes you are with the girl 
who never stops talking 
unable to undress in front 
of each other
unable to look in the mirror 
 
Sometimes you play the piano
fingers recalling their positions
on the keys
notes ringing your name
like a bell in a forest 
in the brightest week 
of a dry season
 
Sometimes you sleepwalk 
from room to room
a bird gathering 
tokens for her journey
cleaving a bouquet of rubble       .
 
Sometimes your body is 
the house                                    
and you slip
through an open window
 
You are a language of ribbon and bone              
You are a line drawing of a fallow field   
You are a tree on bent knees  
 
You are all you ever wanted.    
 
Over the cold throw of oceans 
adrift in the mother-light
beneath their blue-capped skirts
 
you take off your clothes
like January sheds 
the roses of winter         




Jenny Della Santa’s work can be found in Palette Poetry, Pretty Owl Poetry & The Hunger. She was an Academy of American Poets College Poetry Prize winner and nominee for Best of The Net and Best New Poets. She has an MFA from Mills College and lives in Oakland with her husband and young daughter.
  



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