[ the door ]
Jenny Drai
couldn’t be microcosm if broken but we broke too
is the frame of the door’s hive is
how no way can you stay no how longer
you have to leave fragments wax leaves you
may regret the door or walk through
wing by wing dragging wing and who broke the hive’s
government, has been honey to constituency but isn’t, fractures
fire ice element earth air wind rubble volcanic
ash I grasp fingers holding to smother
flame with salt . . . an old myth . . . no just cover the pan I
touched the lid and looked past you shouldn’t
you go there anymore really in your head shouldn’t
you turn
[ there was the keyhole . . . a candle ]
smokes the hive distorting
bees to calm them . . . how ‘them’ implies distance a separate
species fears collaboration . . . slow motion shimmers glowers holds
a future to walk home in blood darkness as if a village scatters but doesn’t
come back rather splinters and blazes . . . shows
all ropes to fly through a space . . . mouth
entrance . . . she drops the phone it happens it happens I say
the act of not choosing
mocks the power of choice options choices but imprisons leftover
drones . . . ubiquitous but unwanted . . . failing opportunities, talking
heads defund food stamps as if a village scatters and doesn’t
matter . . . at some point
they burn
the seconds falling off lives
From [ the door ]
Available from Trembling Pillow Press
Also available from Small Press Distribution
Jenny Drai is the author of [ the door ] (Trembling Pillow Press), Wine Dark (forthcoming April 2016, Black Lawrence Press), The New Sorrow Is Less Than the Old Sorrow (Black Lawrence Press), and Letters to Quince (winner of the Deerbird Novella Prize from Artistically Declined Press). She’s eclectic. Her new hobby is photography. She loves cats. She lives in Bonn, Germany, where she is at work on a novel about Beowulf, queens, and bees.
NB: Please read the [ . . . ] here as white space. Medium’s CSS prevents us from coding variable spacing within the lines, and this are currently our best compromise for showing the lines as the author intends.
