Jenna Goldsmith
Winter 2023 | Poetry
Two Poems
Prophecy
for Kent Johnson
and later, for Kass Fleisher
One of our poets is leaving us
you text late in the afternoon,
though not those exact words,
our phone logs still
a secret best kept
between us.
I know what you mean
brace for who
(must be big)
our us
someone in common,
someone from that time.
Everything about us
us
even now
is of that time.
You can send a poem.
Could be a week,
a month.
In Chicago
at the writer’s conference
I didn’t know what poetry was,
but M was by my side
up from the bayou.
At the top of a building,
my city and my father’s city,
a lawyer reads her own copyright page.
Poets all around,
boot heels on hardwoods,
magazines I don’t know,
Kent’s homage to the last avant garde,
and this, after your death,
so unwillingly,
mine.
Ekphrasis for Plasma
God everywhere but
there is no outer space
this is where I contradict myself
overnight the plant greens
gray black pink first sun at dawn hits: plasma
first sip of cold water on a July afternoon
you teach me how to let them let them
touch me on the street
when I tell you when I’m telling on myself
is your name when I’m teaching it to others
In Spring I get bangs wash my face
should’ve known something moved
old jeans fit new
gold shoes Spring Summer
old poems in boxes
love notes: plasma
mustard couch
for petty tiffs to land: plasma
Looking on :plasma combination kind
not of bones but the sun moon kind
full moon to kiss necks
New moon for people
Jenna Goldsmith is a poet, writer, and Lecturer in English at Rockford University in Rockford, IL. Her poems are published or forthcoming in South Carolina Review, Belt Magazine, New Delta Review, and ADVANCE. Her poetry chapbook, CRUSH, was the winner of the 2022 Baltic Writing Residency Chapbook Contest. She is the City of Rockford Poet Laureate.