Jenna Le

Jenna Le’s first full-length collection of poetry, Six Rivers, was published by New York Quarterly Books in 2011.  Her poems, essays, and translations have been published by Barrow Street, The Brooklyn Rail, New York Quarterly, Post Road, The Rumpus, Salamander, Sycamore Review, and others.  She has been a finalist in the William Carlos Williams Poetry Competition, a Pushcart Prize nominee, and a nominee for the PEN Emerging Writers Award.

 

 

Phillips Beach, 6 AM

The moon, to Tantric Buddhists, is a symbol
of masculinity.  Watch how he ambles
around the earth, an active little boy
gathering dirt-clods in his grubby hands,
gathering the tides, while the sun smiles blandly
from her throne at the milling hoi polloi.
It’s easy to see these things from the helm
of a boat off Phillips Beach at 6 AM:
the sun cupping her pregnant belly with both palms
the way a pyromaniac cups a flame.

 

Devotional

With the underside of your whiskered boar,
cast a shadow on my sprouting bean.
Bite a clay pipe while drowsing in my chair,
but no harder than you’d chew your own lip.
When tides submerge the footbridge between us,
send a moth in a box as your proxy.
Mention your wife in your will, but only as often
as you’ve cried out her name in dreams. 

In my orchard, the apples wear eyepatches
to hide their brown spots from view.
At the bottom of my wishing well,
a merman half-devoured by sharks lies gasping:
it’s been years since the well has known how to tell
my deepest wishes apart from his.

 

To an Aspiring Blues Singer

Your voice is so sweet that a heifer in heat
would tan her own hide, just to make you new shoes.
Your voice is so pure, all the butter and meat
in my pantry is yours to devour, if you choose.
Your voice is as green as unripe apple juice
that on your piano keys dribbles and spills.
But you’ll never be able to master the blues
if you think love’s an illness responsive to pills.

If you doubt me, just look at blues music’s elite:
Etta James, the great dame who on old records coos
that blindness is preferable to keen-eyed defeat,
knew all about love’s brutal nature.  She knew
neither cigarettes, heroin, Prozac, nor booze
can stifle the pain of love’s porcupine quills.
Knew you’ll never be able to master the blues
if you think love’s an illness responsive to pills.

Or consider Ms. Joplin, who, quite indiscreet,
took the stage to lament all the blowhards she’d screw
and be screwed by.  Love’s nothing so simple or neat
as a serotonin shortage, eh, shaggy chanteuse?
Love’s no less than a god, the dark twin of the Muse,
and Janis was one of his martyrs, his kills.
Child, you’ll never be able to master the blues
if you think love’s an illness responsive to pills.

I know what’s at stake, what you’re risking to lose:
when folks doubt you’re sane, they belittle your skills.
But you’ll never be able to master the blues
if you think love’s an illness responsive to pills.