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Hope Jordan

Last Snow

Dog, we dawned

together as the moon strobed

through branches, the trooper’s light pulsed

blue from the highway and bald eagles flew

overhead to the dead pine

behind the neighbors’ house

where children ride

four-wheelers through frozen ruts.

Here lie the pitiable pellets 

of your last defecation, scattered

in a half-circle like the cartoon smile

of a snowman.


Temptations of Entropy

I smell the blood of the bull

pine they limbed today. Warmest winter

in history, sap’s running early

and the geese never left. 


Who will come upon our leavings

someday far from now; a red fragment

from a bowl I bought on sale

because it made olives look beautiful? 


I drive to work singing to REM

It’s the end of the world as we know it –

What’ll they say when they excavate 

the remains of my stainless-steel refrigerator?


Fern spores fuzz it up, winged maple seeds dig in,

a rash of low blueberry bush

and whatever else doesn’t like shade. 


Once, an illustration of what happens

if you let your backyard go—forests choke 

back suburbs, swallow swimming pools, dismantle 

McMansions, slow-motion-explode 

the oldest stone walls. 


Out of my car I walk past the man

who asks for gas money or a fuck; 

a fire alarm has been going off

inside this strip mall

four long days and counting.


Apologia

Sorry, I was thinking 

of the dead raccoon at the side of the trail

a quarter mile from the ravine at the bottom of the slope

crowned by railroad tracks used only twice a year

by someone in Georgia who ships a local clay by freight car

to the 3M plant in Tilton for the manufacture of custom adhesives 

with insulating properties.


I was thinking of the raccoon,

the way the dog rolled on it, joyously, as dogs do, sliding 

partway down the slope, paws aloft, dragging 

the corpse along down.


I was thinking of the porcupine

the dog tangled with near the spur that leads to the bluff

we still call Condom Point for no reason other than 15 years ago 

we brought gloves and a trash bag to tackle a heap of beer cans

and found a dozen used rubbers mixed in.


I was thinking of the porcupine

quills, how you tried to pull them all out, how later the vet said

if left in they can work their mindless ways straight through a body, 

puncturing vital organs as they go.


Hope Jordan grew up in Chittenango, NY, holds a dual BA from Syracuse and an MFA from UMass Boston. She lives in NH, where she was the state’s first official poetry slam master. Her chapbook is The Day She Decided to Feed Crows. Twitter and Insta: @hopejordannh Facebook: hopejordanwriter Website: http://hopejordan.pressfolios.com/

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