Dear M by Jenny MacBain-Stephens and Meg Tisinger
Jenny MacBain-Stephens and Meg Tisinger
#1
Dear J,
Lose yourself in the woods.
I place trinkets
in tree-hollows for squirrels to find.
They are not edible.
I don’t venture out county.
Here is the place to watch
a zombie uprising.
You can see anything coming.
I could pick them off from tree-tops.
I don’t like to play games
that have too many rules.
Stick to UNO.
If we’re talking nostalgia,
then I miss Pepsi-Free
from glass bottles.
My grandparents had those in their basement.
It tasted like medicine,
but also comfort.
This time of year
it’s cheese curds and hard sausage logs.
I guess that’s why so many people have summer birthdays.
What is dangerous where you are?
Parents name their kids
like window cleaners.
I’ll laugh when the salt
starts eating up the roads.
#2
Dear M,
The foliage devours me
my children succumb
to a different kind of scrubbing off.
Squirrel nests cover
blood orange broccoli trees,
chuck trinkets in my face.
That would be the worst way to go,
deciduous exposure
and death by marmoset.
Candlestick horror films breathe
mesquite odor for a touch
of Stockholm syndrome.
You said you were visiting Columbia.
Succumb to green dinner plate palms
and moisture.
Is it better to live dry or moist?
Forests must get sick of our colors,
the same peaches and browns
and tops and bottoms.
They must wonder
why we never change
not knowing all of our spreading
is on the inside. We measure
our changing by their changing
Molecules explode by millisecond.
I am here now and not there
my bones are still my bones
my soul concave.
Peel away
bark of home,
bark of flatiron,
bark of body.
That is why people
travel to outer space.
Our eyes covet
the same shapes
then detest us for the sameness.
Jennifer MacBain-Stephens went to NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and now lives in the DC area. Recent chapbooks are out from Be About it Press, Dancing Girl Press and Shirt Pocket Press. Her first full length collection is forthcoming from Lucky Bastard Press. Recent work can be seen at Jet Fuel Review, Pith, So to Speak, Entropy, Right Hand Pointing, Cider Press Review, and decomP. Visit: http://jennifermacbainstephens.wordpress.com/.
Meg Tisinger went to the University of Iowa and makes a mean kale lasagna. She has a love/hate relationship with horror films and takes photographs. Also, some of her poetry was published in Pretty Owl Poetry.