Jennifer Ruth Jackson

Winter Light

Jennifer Ruth Jackson

Aurora borealis zigzags Crease night’s obsidian veil Stars stand apart White-faced pallbearers

Shifting greens float like a Dancer’s dress baring Legs, granting peeks at Heaven’s skin

Tearing grief and wonder From moon’s watchful Eye in frozen multicolor Faith

Astronomy in Time

Jennifer Ruth Jackson

We constructed a new moon with half-empty wine bottles and half-dead stars. Gazers, we rested our backs on a hill darker than the sky in its navy blazer. You were my Copernicus and I, your Galileo—all bright theories and significance. We cut slices of the universe and fed each other, grasping cosmos and hands decades apart.

Tipton Poetry Journal – Winter 2021

2020 Changes

Jennifer Ruth Jackson

We bump elbows upon meeting... gloved hands near our chests. We disagree on basic definitions. "Distance" is the number of feet in a checkout line. "Pandemic triage" morphs into "medicallycondoned eugenics". "Essential" gains six meanings, not all necessary. Everything tastes of faint chlorine... even your lover's tongue.

Jennifer Ruth Jackson is an award-winning poet and fiction writer living in Wisconsin whose work has appeared in Red Earth Review, Banshee, and more. She runs a blog for disabled and neurodivergent creatives called The Handy, Uncapped Pen from an apartment she shares with her husband. Follow her on Twitter @jenruthjackson.