The Crux

I crawl inside the church of your mind
and peer out of the blue stained glass
where light is my own reflection,
the parable of where I end and you begin

My past stops without you—
without you—time was always an illusion
I am the fear you have of love,
the tiny space between words and air

As a child, I dreamed of the sky
I would see with you, how your perception
of autumn leaves would change my sight,
when in your arms, I could fold into some other me

I can never burrow enough, never be happy
inside your church without breaking the beams,
without rebuilding the foundation,
the parable of where I end and you begin




Poem for an Ally




Haggard and blanched, he strolls with the gait of a prophet
mesmerized by mordant voices who tell him virgins
await him in death, that the trolley pressing forward
is an elephant of gold, trimmed in emeralds that glow like
his eyes…One step into that hallucination, and Christ
rides the elephant, beckoning the man into a delirium
of joy not offered in missions and dull soup, not obtainable
in the coldness of concrete beds in winter. His eyes are
untamed and liberated, and he laughs from the gut, his wiry
hair vibrating around his sunken cheeks. He laughs until
he greets the elephant, until his promised virgins fly out
of the trolley windows and lift him into his version of heaven.

I want to play your soul accordion

Press your valves open
Surge across terrazzo of steel
Until I hear your body resonate

I want to unzip your soul jacket
Turn sleeves inside out
Bury my mind under your hood

Until our bodies interlace like chords
Emboldened with secret languages




Purchase Choices




Phosphorescent lights spray unkind
into the eyes among exponential store-
aisles that host millions of things,
like wanton ornaments and happiness-in-a-box.

Seasonal colors imitate ruddy tarpaulin
cheeks on the vacuous mugs of corpulent families
that twitch twinges of lucid melancholy at dense
clutter and social facades, that slouch mute
melodramas in their logo t-shirts—dig deep down
and they’d know they’re nothing but ads themselves.

Yammering at their puerile brats with consumer
boils for fingers, their love does not grow
because it hangs on their Christmas trees,
purchased at Wal-Mart and paid for with strings
of condensed lights stolen from their souls.




If Hell hath, then I am She




When you look at me
with the maelstrom of your eyes
dilated, a scared man,
scarred elusive bird,
I have no room for temperance,
nothing but creative fury.

I want you to own me
without feeling owned.
I want total freedom—and total
control. Not a smidgen-
pigeon of you is left to take.





Not Like Words




Not like the balsamic touching the leaves,
the fermented fruit squealing in the mouth.
Nor like the chords ringing below,
the minors vibrating surreal sounds.

Not like consumption, too close for that,
Nor like four letters or three words or any of that,
the in between, not between, the between between.

Not like those past, the ones with retention,
the ones without temperance drowning what is me,
Nor like any other, no priority at all.





Reincarnation




I could believe in reincarnation, but reality could be holographic. Reincarnation is too simple to fit what we know, too complicated to fit what we don’t know. You didn’t meet your Elizabethan Self unless the hologram ate your mother and spat out your baby the day before yesterday with a backwards clock on a Dali painting. Don’t pretend like you know; that’s all I’m saying.




Jennifer Hollie Bowles in Knoxville, TN, where she works as a case manager, plays shakuhachi, dances to trip-hop, and talks to poltergeists who pretend to be her father. She is the editor of The Medulla Review (www.themedullareview.com), and her work has been accepted for publication in Echo Ink Review, Word Riot, Thieves Jargon, The New York Quarterly, and The Ampersand Review, among many others. Jennifer doesn’t own a TV or a watch.