- Touch It Every Day
Someone gave it to me as a prompt—and, yes, a joke as well, but I wanted to askwhat it is I’m supposed to touch, like today,for instance, when I saw the blood moonpersimmons hanging as if snatched out of orbitand glued to bare December trees. I admitI wanted to grab one of those radiant globes,so defiantly there, before I remembered, likea rebuke, the mouthy tang they’re famous for,and that chest-high crooked fence someonelong ago staked up between us, though isn’tit always the fragile boundaries that invite—defying our fear of being caught and calleda thief just to satisfy a moment of desire?Or was it a desire for the moment?That’s the difficult part about touching;it’s never a single thing. Eyes go one way,hands another, and the brain keeps trackingthe time when everything veers so coylyout of reach, like those childhood gamesof tag where I was such a slow runner,my fingers barely grazing the lightbefore it slipped away. [End Page 121]
jeanne wagner won the 2016 Sow’s Ear Poetry Review Chapbook Contest. Her poems have appeared in The Cincinnati Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, and Shenandoah. Her latest collection of poetry is In the Body of Our Lives.