All day this thoughthad me reeling—did not vanishand then return—was persistentlike a ceilingleak pinging into tin.Opaque rain all day—what am Ito myself:Two feet onsome landwhen upright;a backbone with brancheswhen supine? Thoughtsbecomeweary—and merely announcelinearity. Love,I amso wary of thishappiness, whenit floods in—whenit tumbles to a halt—a rough-cut rubyat the center of a silver bowl.Rain is the loneliest color,then lake, then shade.
Love, I Am
Elizabeth Jacobson
Feature Date
- July 19, 2023
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Copyright © 2023 by Elizabeth Jacobson.
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission.
Elizabeth Jacobson was the fifth Poet Laureate of Santa Fe, New Mexico and an Academy of American Poets 2020 Laureate Fellow. Her most recent book, Not into the Blossoms and Not into the Air, won the New Measure Poetry Prize, selected by Marianne Boruch, (Free Verse Editions/Parlor Press, 2019), and the 2019 New Mexico-Arizona Book Award for both New Mexico Poetry and Best New Mexico Book. Her other books include Her Knees Pulled In (Tres Chicas Books, 2012), two chapbooks from Dancing Girl Press, Are the Children Make Believe? and A Brown Stone, and Everything Feels Recent When You’re Far Away, Poetry and Art from Santa Fe Youth During the Pandemic (Axle Books, 2021), which she co-edited. Her work has been published in many literary journals including the American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, Plume, On the Seawall, the Los Angeles Review, and her community projects have received eight consecutive grants from the Witter Bynner Foundation for Poetry. Elizabeth is a reviews editor for the on-line magazine Terrain.org, and she teaches poetry workshops regularly in Santa Fe, often in partnership with the Center for Contemporary Arts and the public library.
May/June 2023
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Editor
Elizabeth Scanlon
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