Jessica Jacobs
13th Birthday and Something Said to Wake Early
so I bellied out to the edge of our dock, fitted my fingers, palms
down, and rested my chin in their knuckled valley. Beneath
the black of the sky—a soft black, one in the process of giving itself
to morning—the water was hammered aluminum, dimpled and glossy.
But something swam against the current, surfacing at set intervals.
A gator? Two dark peaks, the terrible mouth submerged. The ruptured
lake resealing after it while far trees charred and crumpled
as the sun rose fast behind them, its kerf of light slashing toward me,
rutting the water as a buck does a tree trunk, leaving a fragrant, bright
wound. At its touch, carp leapt attacking minnows, each splash triggering
a band of explosions, ripples shattering against the dock.
And there I was, hovering
above a lake now boiling with fish. Herons made their long-necked dives. And me
in that body, newly a teenager, my legs and underarms freshly clear cut, razed
by razor blade, naked to the day. Breasts heavy and foreign as a knapsack. Desire
just as weighted—an insistent pull in my gut, flush in my chest. I wanted to be
anywhere else, I wanted to be, suddenly, with
others. The brine and swell of them, the splintered smell as I lay my cheek
to the boards, new stink from my armpits, which I had not yet learned
to mask, musk from the panties I’d dreamt in—a smell I could not yet
name, the warmth of it, the sweet sour ache of a body, opening.
If fear
is metal in the mouth; desire, burnt sugar on the tongue; what was the taste
of that day? Of that fish-jumped, sun-stunned morning?
It was the green
of just mowed Sunday lawns, of mineral and lake muck, seaweed and algal blooms,
and, for the first time, an awareness of the taste of my own mouth, which I hoped
would one day soon taste another’s. A passing plane was a silver mote
in the sky. Take me with you, wherever you’re going.
Jessica Jacobs is the author of Pelvis with Distance, winner of the New Mexico Book Award in Poetry and a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award. Her chapbook, In Whatever Light Left to Us, is just out from Sibling Rivalry Press. An avid long-distance runner, Jessica has worked as a rock climbing instructor, bartender, editor, and professor, and now teaches in the graduate program at Lenoir-Rhyne University and serves as a member of Beloit Poetry Journal's editorial board. She lives in Asheville, North Carolina, with her wife, the poet Nickole Brown. More of her poems, fiction, and essays can be found at www.jessicalgjacobs.com.
Return to November 2016 Edition
so I bellied out to the edge of our dock, fitted my fingers, palms
down, and rested my chin in their knuckled valley. Beneath
the black of the sky—a soft black, one in the process of giving itself
to morning—the water was hammered aluminum, dimpled and glossy.
But something swam against the current, surfacing at set intervals.
A gator? Two dark peaks, the terrible mouth submerged. The ruptured
lake resealing after it while far trees charred and crumpled
as the sun rose fast behind them, its kerf of light slashing toward me,
rutting the water as a buck does a tree trunk, leaving a fragrant, bright
wound. At its touch, carp leapt attacking minnows, each splash triggering
a band of explosions, ripples shattering against the dock.
And there I was, hovering
above a lake now boiling with fish. Herons made their long-necked dives. And me
in that body, newly a teenager, my legs and underarms freshly clear cut, razed
by razor blade, naked to the day. Breasts heavy and foreign as a knapsack. Desire
just as weighted—an insistent pull in my gut, flush in my chest. I wanted to be
anywhere else, I wanted to be, suddenly, with
others. The brine and swell of them, the splintered smell as I lay my cheek
to the boards, new stink from my armpits, which I had not yet learned
to mask, musk from the panties I’d dreamt in—a smell I could not yet
name, the warmth of it, the sweet sour ache of a body, opening.
If fear
is metal in the mouth; desire, burnt sugar on the tongue; what was the taste
of that day? Of that fish-jumped, sun-stunned morning?
It was the green
of just mowed Sunday lawns, of mineral and lake muck, seaweed and algal blooms,
and, for the first time, an awareness of the taste of my own mouth, which I hoped
would one day soon taste another’s. A passing plane was a silver mote
in the sky. Take me with you, wherever you’re going.
Jessica Jacobs is the author of Pelvis with Distance, winner of the New Mexico Book Award in Poetry and a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award. Her chapbook, In Whatever Light Left to Us, is just out from Sibling Rivalry Press. An avid long-distance runner, Jessica has worked as a rock climbing instructor, bartender, editor, and professor, and now teaches in the graduate program at Lenoir-Rhyne University and serves as a member of Beloit Poetry Journal's editorial board. She lives in Asheville, North Carolina, with her wife, the poet Nickole Brown. More of her poems, fiction, and essays can be found at www.jessicalgjacobs.com.
Return to November 2016 Edition