Diana, and: Chasing Beauty
Rent from DeepDyve- Diana, and: Chasing Beauty
DIANA
Slade Kentucky, ca. 1975
In her dreams, she sees rabbitsrunning in the woods.
White ones swallow blackones, head first and whole.
She labors to push them outbefore they stop
breathing. In her mind,she has infinite children
with cherub faces.They bring her what they kill.
She eats the hearts first,before they go bad—
as all hearts will. [End Page 30]
CHASING BEAUTY
She takes up too much spacewith her books, her soup
bowls. Breaks a bonerather than cope
with brokenness.There are so many ways to do it:
pistol, razor blade, river.But she can’t accept
the ugliness, the spectacle—when all her life
she has chased after beauty.So she starts keeping bees,
growing plots of Oleanderbecause she read somewhere
that their flowerswill poison you
if you eat the honeymade by bees
that have savored the nectar. [End Page 31]
Jessica D. Thompson’s poems have appeared, or are forthcoming, in numerous journals across the country, among them Atlanta Review, The Chaffin Journal, Tiferet Journal, The Sow’s Ear, and The Midwest Quarterly. She is the author of the chapbook Bullets and Blank Bibles, and was awarded the 2013 James Baker Hall Memorial Prize in Poetry by New Southerner and the 2014 Kudzu Poetry Prize.
