Category: jennifer browne

Near the Rappahannock, Wellfleet Oysters // Jennifer Browne

~ South Broadway Press ~ Leave a comment
Image: Beatrice Bright

NEAR THE RAPPAHANNOCK, WELLFLEET OYSTERS

BY JENNIFER BROWNE

The liquor in an oyster is the brine
of the water-body held at harvest.
This river drains the Blue Ridge,
meets the Chesapeake with a sigh,
leaves a sweetness in the locals,
but on the new planks of Wellfleet
Harbor, I tasted your salt. Beloved,
that one word in the day’s chalk
floods the room with light. Could
I ever choose another having known
your waiting nacre, your shucked,
gleam-soft interior along my tongue?

Jennifer Browne falls in love easily with other people’s dogs. She is the author of American Crow (Beltway Editions) and the poetry chapbooks Before: After; In a Period of Absence, a Lake; whisper song; and The Salt of the Geologic World. Find more of her work at linktr.ee/jenniferabrowne.

Last Fig | Jennifer Browne

~ South Broadway Press ~ Leave a comment
Image: John Hayes

Last Fig

A kid outside shouts
“There’s no tomorrow!”
and, I think, he’s right.
And, I think, how must
it feel to be this kid, ten
and skating a paved alley,
bright sunshine in April,
and feel not joy but dread.
The world is burning.
But I have just eaten a fig
that tastes of your mouth
and tastes of my desire
for your mouth, so if
he’s onto something,
and there is no tomorrow,
let me fall into the rubble
with this last wash of your
sweetness on my tongue,
let my desire be the blade
of sprouting green
that cracks the wreckage,
let all the world that comes
after sing out for you.

Jennifer Browne (she/her) falls in love easily with other people’s dogs. Her poems have recently appeared in One Sentence Poems, Right Hand Pointing, Quarto, Trailer Park Quarterly, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, and the tiny wren anthology All Poems are Ghosts.