Four Poems

Jess Dutschmann

Seventh Heaven

There is a little girl everywhere who cleans glasses behind a bar.
I borrowed her to show you how I feel when I do something nice
for someone to show them I love them. I borrow my womb from
myself to be a nest for your thoughts. I want to exist as someone’s
metaphor. I want to be tucked into a window when the world goes
out, watching the lights of our souls burst and fade like carpet bombs.

A Prehistory of Mermaid Wives

your hair got so long in the time that I knew you that I couldn’t find you      I
painted dolphins at sunset on bar slat walls      when we lived in the
mountains     I dared you to swim in the creek      show me that tail of yours
splashing in shallows        you re
fused, waited           later, older, under cigarette haze, you’ll lend me your lips
fade on me like always when you’re drunk you shut things off
like pregnancy       like staph   bedroom lights     your thighs

Zolom Memory

The night we ran across the swamp we were drinking lemonade
on the porch.
Eating red beet eggs. It was summer. The light was that goldenrod hue
you only get one hour of

each day seems like. This poem sounds like it’s going to be about
destruction but is
actually about snakeskin & your torn cuticles & how they scratch the
sides of my cheeks when you’re

holding my face in your hands, saying oh little bee what are we going
to do about that, pulling
your hands down to my heart and rubbing my sternum in awkward circles.
That night the neighbor saw me

hugging myself walking to the store, and asked if I was sick. I
wish she could’ve
seen the other me, the one in dotted lines and daydreams, perform the dance:

Collapse in place    clutch at heart with hands     watch ribs spread
automatically     watch snakes
voles salamanders pour out      laugh. They fled into slivers in the
cattails, open doors, the dark places.

Holy

Do not forget about evil, little one.
Evil is a rainstorm.
Then, because of the falling of the water
we get flooded with it.
Boil your incoherence, child,
this is not your time.
I know you will not listen to me.
All of us are born fixers.