Jennifer Fossenbell recently relocated from Beijing, China back to Denver, USA. Her poetry and other linguistic experiments have appeared in online and print publications in China, the U.S., and Vietnam, most recently So & So, Black Warrior Review, The Hunger, and where is the river. She completed her creative writing MFA at the University of Minnesota in 2014. Also, there is no “back”.
I WANT TO GO BACK / TO BELIEVING A STORY
fast-drying into
brittle like Bach for harpsicord
short rivulets either
end or split stutter
like a daughter
still as a piano
on loan for entire
adulthood, one
borrower dead
sky white cup, canvas
backpacking politics
it was always only words as walls piled, too cool to melt stay with magma green
everywhere, pictorial no space, too many spaces split us like time too much time splits
us like the doing
does and undoes
lace as skin stripped
of voice, the “resist”
aria, mantra over
cello promise of
depth fluid florid
statehood the matter
of belief the word
“indoctrinated”
cactus spine into
muscle, one smiles
the other winces but
it’s only
a tiny story on a train