By Jennifer Elise Foerster
My crown.
My room.
Surrounding snow.
These are not my
hands, my winter shoes
carried off by uncertain music.
There was a meadow
behind my house
and if I should see myself there
she would tell me
there was never a meadow
and then walk through me
as if through a cloud
and carry on in her own
solitary direction.
Crows still caw
in her palace garden—
tram rails, rain,
stammering moon.
Once lilacs bloomed
their huge white knuckles
breaking the winter of my room—
it was a dream—French windows
on a Viennese street.
Every street I cross
angling alongside
smoggy postwar artifices
branches scratch
against my sleep.
How my body was a branch
in my sleep.
And when I woke
years later
I peered down upon it
leafless and stiff.
No roosts left, no caw.
No birds blooming
in my dream’s green crooks.
Afternoons alone
are labyrinthine.
I wander the city, searching
for what? Friends,
we knew where to find each other,
tapping the window of the winter room.
We were thinner then,
younger than the chestnut trees.
Everything has its seed
much later
and on the other side of time.
Jennifer Elise Foerster, "The Other Side." Copyright © 2017 Jennifer Elise Foerster. Used by permission of the author for PoetryNow, a partnership between the Poetry Foundation and the WFMT Radio Network.
Source: PoetryNow (2017)
Poet Bio
More Poems about Activities
Sestina in Prose
It was like climbing a mountain to those of us who’d climbed one. To the others, it was like, I suppose, something else. In other words, we let everybody find her own figure of speech.
Not that it—speech—lay thick on the...
Town of Frijoles
In the town of frijoles,
men eat their meals without
washing their hands, wanting
to bless their mothers’ food
with soil from the fields.
In the town of frijoles,
boys beat on hollow pots,
the last wiping of their sides
with a piece of tortilla as
holy a moment...
More Poems about Living
Dragons
We gathered in a field southwest of town,
several hundred hauling coolers
and folding chairs along a gravel road
dry in August, two ruts of soft dust
that soaked into our clothes
and rose in plumes behind us.
By noon we could discern their massive coils
emerging...
How to Triumph Like a Girl
I like the lady horses best,
how they make it all look easy,
like running 40 miles per hour
is as fun as taking a nap, or grass.
I like their lady horse swagger,
after winning. Ears up, girls, ears up!
But mainly, let’s be honest,...
More Poems about Nature
How to Triumph Like a Girl
I like the lady horses best,
how they make it all look easy,
like running 40 miles per hour
is as fun as taking a nap, or grass.
I like their lady horse swagger,
after winning. Ears up, girls, ears up!
But mainly, let’s be honest,...
Sestina in Prose
It was like climbing a mountain to those of us who’d climbed one. To the others, it was like, I suppose, something else. In other words, we let everybody find her own figure of speech.
Not that it—speech—lay thick on the...