Jennifer Jean

• Evolution
  

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Who knew we’d scramble
out the rip 
of the ocean of home?
 
Your staggering proving
first is the worst.
Who knew we’d subsist
 
as a rule? Morph into lonely
navigators of adulthood—me
with a cesarean belly,
 
you with a beard like a mask.
If I’d done one drug
would you’ve done less?
 
Am I meant to keep you?
Be some victorious Abel
wrenching the narrative, 
 
the elder brother close?
Knock knock! Who is it
we are evolving 
 
towards? I think it’s who & 
where we come from. (&,
I don’t mean:
 
the ill-advised love
of hurt humans,
the pummeled womb,
 
the apartment on Westminster,
a specific day there,
the breaking
 
of a door
by a cop’s crowbar,
or the following night.) 

Jennifer Jean’s latest poetry collection VOZ is forthcoming in 2023. Additional collections include The Fool and Object Lesson. Her teaching resource book is Object Lesson: a Guide to Writing Poetry. She’s received honors, residencies, and fellowships from the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop, DISQUIET/Dzanc Books, the Massachusetts Cultural Council, the Her Story Is collective, the Academy of American Poets, and Women’s Federation for World Peace. As well, her poems and co-translations have appeared in POETRY, Rattle, The Common, Waxwing, On the Seawall, and elsewhere. Jennifer edits translations for Consequence Forum and is the program manager of 24PearlStreet, the Fine Arts Work Center’s online writing program. For more info, visit: www.jenniferjeanwriter.com 

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