Send up to three poems on the subject of or at least mentioning the words hell and/or heaven, totaling up to 150 lines in length including stanza breaks, in the body of an email message or attached in a Word file to donkingfishercampbell@gmail.com by 11:59 PM PDT on September 22nd. No PDF's please. Color and B&W artwork are also desired. Please send in JPG form. No late submissions accepted. Poets and artists published in Four Feathers Press Online Edition: Hell or Heaven will be published online and invited to read at the Saturday Afternoon Poetry Zoom meeting on Saturday, September 23rd between 3 and 5 pm PST.

Wednesday, September 20, 2023

Jeffry Michael Jensen


NAVIGATING BEWILDERMENT


My eyes were closed as the rusty wheels

Took up their destiny in the soggy sand.


A ship of many tongues was driven to the edges

Of an acidic resolution without a bone to bury.


My mathematical elevator left thousands of stones

At the bottom of a melancholy depository of distilled heavenly excuses.


No one attempted to straighten the distance between

A hellish hemisphere burning bright and the oppressors of a polluted journey.


My mineral collaboration with God took a turn beyond orderly abuse

Before the raucous singing angels could fertilize a planet.


A domestic smugness added weight to the dusty conquest of a bliss

That originated where jasmine perfumed eternity.


My oyster odes returned to the ocean for a saltshaker sanctuary

That left no explanation for a dizzy soul to confess its bewilderment.


A sombrero heart that can crack the nub of both Heaven and Hell

Takes a circulatory curve toward what can be the inexhaustible ringing of change.


No comments:

Post a Comment

Lorelei Kay

Banning the Bean Dashing home after third grade, I pushed aside our heavy front door and ran inside hollering, “Mom, I’m…” when the od...