December 14th: Jenny Gropp Hess

Ornaments of Providence & Welded Water

snowy December
sunshine.
           instead of a hot air balloon
           I have cardinals
                       in melted birdbath water,
           like a well-meaning professor
                       saying morning.
 
            ***
 
I drink a sunlit whiskey,
        a belt of coal
right through me.
    
            ***
poke
                  at the ice tray,
disrupt a cube.
   
           ***
remembered names,
           like black holes
           folded into hand-passed
                        notes.
 
            ***
 
O Mailman,
             your thousand boxes
             are spots on a bush
             where berries grow.
                            if someone dies
              or moves away,
                            another berry
        in the same place.
   
                  ***
 
somewhere the parrot
                 and the aloe
                 will outlive me
                 beautifully.
   
                  ***
above, the sky
             slow-churns icily,
             crosses like freezer gin.
a cold pilot light
              lit.

 

Jenny Gropp Hess attends the University of Alabama and edits the Black Warrior Review. Her work appears in or is forthcoming from Colorado Review, Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art, Parcel, Unsaid, Seneca Review, and others.