Raised by a grandmother who quoted Ferlinghetti and an uncle who recited the poetry of John Lennon while playing the bongos at the breakfast table, Jennifer was hooked on performance poetry very early in life, going on to win poetry prizes in high school and college. An active and engaging performer on the Washington, D.C. literary scene,  Jennifer has been a featured reader at Iota and Chapters: A Literary Bookstore, and has also read at Café Muse and the Mariposa Center for Artistic Expression. Recently, she was asked by the Cooking Club at the Library of Congress to write a new poem on a culinary theme for its soon-to-be-published cookbook. Her poetry has been published in literary journals Gargoyle and The Aquarian.

What They Would Have Told Us
Two Different Kinds
Repeating the Ocean
Safety
Curry Song (The Sweet Below the Burn)
Swing With Me
All Things Pleasant
Thursday Morning, 9:00 a.m.
In Search of
The Contract
at Ollie’s
Valentine
It was He

And on the lighter side...

A Day at Sense-Camp
Bottom
Affirmation Song
schnauzer song
Song for Cheryl
The Interview
\\vetch\\
WhenJenny
Mitosis: A Burgundian Drama in One Act

All Things Pleasant

The man in the subway sat slumped, eyes glazed with a dismal weariness. On purpose she chose him, sliding gently into the adjacent seat. Reaching into his mind with sly gloved fingers, searching and sifting through the everyday gray until she found the ones she sought...Breathing into them until they glowed again, lighting up one by one: the soft spearmint of his lover’s breath; the feel of a cane pole taught with snapper; the exploding succulence of his favourite fried chicken; the smell of his mother in her Sunday best... At the next stop he rose renewed, suffused with the memory of All Things Pleasant. She had done her work.

Thursday Morning, 9:00 a.m.

Thursday morning, 9:00 a.m. He took his usual route through the city that day, part of the purposeful press of black-and-white bodies swarming toward their honeycomb tombs. At the edge of his workaday tunnel vision, the commotion caught his eye. It was a woman, struggling with insect determination to free herself from a pile of cellophane packing material. Now curious, he moved closer. The woman was shedding. Several layers of her had fallen away already, accumulating in a brittle pile behind her, dull transparent husks that eerily retained the outlines of her original shape. Still attached at the heel, they clung obstinately like an old scab to that last point of connection with the living tissue.

None of this was noticed by the passers-by, whose faces were set in stony compliance with the unspoken Law of Commuting. He knew what he had to do. Brandishing the Swiss army knife he kept faithfully tucked away in his briefcase for God-knows-what... squirming slightly as he drew closer to her glistening moistness... he knelt and cut quickly until she was free. The woman stepped away with a new lightness, thinking finally she had wrestled her high heel from that pesky grate, unaware of the metamorphosis that had just occurred.

Repeating the Ocean

Who will repeat the unspeakable things the Ocean tells us?

Her voice, incessant,

Gossiping through the faucet; gurgling through the cappuccino machine

Not asking, telling.

Some of us hear her and begin building our boats

Those of us who understand her differently begin taking them apart

Plank by plank.

We work side by side in the same cacophonous workshop.

Casually, she says,

“Drowning could bring out the best in you

And if you surrender

I will offer you the strange safety of knowing yourself

As only your bones.”

Somehow this offer does not appeal.

We go on working.

She grows more bold.

“Even while you insist on containing your water

In those thin skins

Your suits are always leaking.

In your sweat, in your tears, in your passion

It is my essence you exchange.

And if you touch it to your lips

You will taste everything that enters me;

Be in all places at all times.”

The idea is embarrassing.

We pretend not to hear; return to the ringing and sawing.

The last thing she says, she whispers.

It is harder to hear than the other unspeakable things.

“Nothing that you really need

Will ever be taken away.

Whatever I steal I will return to you

On some future tide.

It will be changed.

It may take you a little while to recognize it.”

We stop working and lean in.

But her voice, already faint, recedes to a rumour,

Breathing through the cell phones, surging through the intersection,

Not asking,

Knowing.

We sit in a windowless room, waiting.

Time and attendance,

Consultative management,

Diversity awareness.

The things that happen in these classrooms

We barely remember.

Time and attendance.

The trainers arrive, step into the florescent light.

I don’t remember the room ever shifting like this.

“To those of you with a talent for secret pain,

You have an equal talent for secret joy.”

“The history you wear so heavily is a garment

You can change at will.

The hooks and snaps are many and hard to reach.

So we dress and undress each other, until we agree on the perfect shade.”

Consultative management,

Diversity awareness.

“The arrows that we shoot are still traveling

Long after we forget about them.

They land, each of them,

At the moment we remember their destinations.”

Time and attendance,

Consultative management, 

Diversity awareness.

“Our time together is done.

Go back to work now,

And remember

    all the things we would have told you.”

Pile of glass on the street

Testimony to last night's accident

It may look sad at first,

But see how the shards are rounded

Think how the curb rose up to meet her;

   The grass

To bolster her falling body

How time stopped

The picture frozen at the spray of diamonds

     midair -- a kind of christening.

It may look sad at first

But see how it was

How even the glass

Tried not to hurt her.

They say the perfect curry

Reveals itself in layers.

The raw-hot scorch of naked chili

A jauntiness of ginger, then the sharp needle of cumin

And under all, the sweet singing of onions

             that have given up their sugar

A final act of surrender.

They say the secret

Is in long simmering.

I tell you this:

It is ourselves, and not the sauce

That must be simmered!

Then, and only then,

When soft and sharp are reconciled

And life has cooked us to the desired tenderness

We offer up ourselves,

Reveal our exquisite complexity

In a song of all that is sweet

Below the burn.

Swing with me, people,

Between the two extremes.

Between optimism and pessimism

Hang on to the bar,

Because this is the easy part!

The time between,

When we sail in a graceful arc

Between the platforms.

Hanging on with both hands

We have time to look around,

Even show off.

But who will be there to catch us on the other side?

The dimpled one with the twinkly wink

Who smells like overalls just out of the dryer

Shelters baby mice in his pocket,

Maybe gives you a donut --

Or the sneering Dutch Calvinist

Who shows you a picture of your messy room

Reminds you how much money you could be making

If only you applied yourself

Sometimes they change places

Just to confuse us --

Best to make friends with both of them.

I'm still learning

the balancing part of the act:

To giggle in the judge's stern face

And soberly decline the donut.

But there is time to rehearse it over and over

Here, in the place between

Swing with me, then --

The air is fine!

It is landing that is the kicker...

Long have I wandered 

  in search of

A man who could cook his own moon

Serving me generously from a cauldron

  in which he has melted himself

Stirring gently so the impurities 

  rise up to the top to be skimmed

Patiently paring 

  until he discovers 

All that is round.

We arranged to have this accident, you know,

And now having done the required damage to each other,

What do you make of it, and how will we prove it was meant to be?

They, forgetting their contract, leaving the scene;

Repairing to the diner to order the more expensive of the two kinds of pancakes.

I have seen him

       Waxing philosophical

  after the stage is empty   and rudely

   having soiled Thoreau with

                    leftover pizza

     leaves...

                 destroying microcosms with

                                 jarring step.

Self-righteous, he...

carrying Christ in

           a paper bag (without even an airhole)

To Ollie’s house

   where both will talk

                Pop-Tarts and masturbation

Getting nowhere

          but dreaming

               of bigger

                    and better

                          paper bags.

Tiny hand smallfeet

 softskin One

     above all others

in the sweet suction of time

                     I love you mostly

It was he she only wanted

Sleeping she yielded her soul

Twisting she slept

Turning in tinted dreams

    her softness his

Waking the eyes did not betray

Working the downcast eyes

Laboured the bridled word 

    the brittle smile

It was he.

In my formless

Natural-fiber clothing I will

Show you where the

dead wood   stood

with

In your formless

Personality

where styles would grow there

If they could

      (Never would)

CHORUS:

Now you chase a nugget round the bowl

         (Mind of a dog, mind of a dog)

Nugget-chasing lips that lick my soul

                        (Mind of a dog)

In my formless

wordical erection I will

Show you how the 

head should   good    

with

Out your formless 

Personality

where thoughts could show there

If they would

Magazine:               Tell us about your recent experience.

Jennifer:               In my own voice. I want to say it in my own voice.

Magazine:               With particular regard to content and form.

Jennifer:               Please let me say it.

Much later.....

Magazine:               How do you know when to stop?

Jennifer:               I can’t explain it.  It is somehow related to the

                        way THINGS l o O k.

Magazine:               Are there any other items you wish to mention?



Jennifer:               I like how Jewish people chop up eggs and put them

                        in things.  You know, the way you find a bit of yolk

                        here and there.

Magazine:               If you had to do it over again, would you?

Jennifer:               Of course not.  Of all the rude things.

polyphonic vetch

milk me dry 

and run home laughing to 

herd the cows

and smile your silly syllogisms all over

Fred’s garden hose

When Jenny smelt carbohydrate vöörte

She trippen down such ashen staire

Nor soughten out ein maple foote

(In clandestine gebüng bewaire).

and O her bottom

      (so big So Big)

her girdle

      (gripping her gladly bottom)

All stretching to pop

      and spilling her gladly wobble.

I am calm and centered.

My life is becoming better and better.

I enjoy bringing order to my environment.

I am now attracting all the love that I need.

I return phone calls promptly.

I am in harmony with my essential nature.

My pets are shiny and well behaved.

I forgive and release everyone in my life.

I am free of resentment, hostility, and the desire for revenge.

I meet each day with a lopsided grin.

I am playful, creative, and spontaneous.

My cuticles are strong and firm.

I am often treated to dinner at expensive restaurants.

I now have an excellent memory, and I enjoy getting my own way.

I have bulbous, narrow-set eyes and appear to be at peace with myself.

Sinus pain has no place in my beautiful life.

I no longer collect animal figurines.

The world is a wonderful place to be.

I have VERY

you do not know me, my sweet

my eastern ways are as the monsoon’s moist minglings

   to your torrid soul

and the fragrance of my foodstuffs bewitches

you cannot know me, and yet

i would have you in an instant

to worship your weaknesses

  to soothe

     unguarded longings

in tenderness   only

do i seek thee my fucking pinhead.

to fly together into the vast astral bleakness 

that is Erythria

knowing that in our union all are united

cuban, nun, and sturgeon

in glandular expansion we glow, snaveling in prophetic mink

to the ONE TRUE polymer that may one day save the whales

with rectal righteousness we face him...

our only enema

            the snail

and do you taunt me, in recollection     of your conversation

with small wicked trilobites who would 

                            rule the planet

in exchange for a box    of milk duds

, or plantagenet polly spouting her nihilist quizshow protoplasm in

orgiastic precognition of a girl scout with braces and the whole bleedin’

load of Chapati-crunchers come to take over the london underground (what

with Maggie in power) and the total confusion in the endoderm?

(sung)

one-eyed schnauzer, public schnauzer, schnauzer on a stick

schnauzers for the revitalization of local government

and schnauzers 

  with anuses the size of a house

(spoken)

we live and exist in theNow opening minds through

     frozen vectors with redeye gravy in totemic

baldness

that defies

(even the best of days)

and leaving us to pollinate in 

Erythrian gloom.

STEVE: Faretheewell, my fair lady. I shall follow in your footsteps.

JENNIFER: And in so following, wilst thou not follow further?

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