Enter the Dragon
Jessamyn Smyth
Oh, when it’s yes
she wakes, and once
woken, hungry
and no is not
in her vocabulary;
curling, shining
scales of yes
sung, shed, fallen
in whispering drifts
blown by incomprehension
into corners, dry drifts
on the ground, tinkling
broken shards now, still
iridescent, each still
containing the whole
and matchless yes
From Kitsune
Available from Finishing Line Press
Jessamyn Smyth is the founding Director of the new international Quest Writer’s Conference, and was the founder, creator, and Editor in Chief of the literary & arts journal Tupelo Quarterly. Her collection of short stories, The Inugami Mochi, and her collection of hybrid-poetry, Gilgamesh/Wilderness, are forthcoming in 2016 and 2017 from Saddle Road Press. Her chapbook Kitsune was a winner in the New Women’s Voices Series of Finishing Line Press (2013), and will soon be followed by two more Trickster cycles. Her poetry, short stories, and prose appears in Life and Legends, The Taos Journal of International Poetry and Prose, Red Rock Review, Nth Position, Naugatuck River Review, Cezanne’s Carrot, MiCrow/Full of Crow, Abalone Moon, Qarrtsiluni, The Montucky Review, Meat for Tea, Wingbeats: Exercises and Practice in Poetry, and other journals and anthologies. (More here.)
