I never knew I loved Jess Perini

A work by my very first guest poet, Jessica Perini! Thank you so much for gracing my blog with your words and images, Jess x

after Hikmet/O’Hara/Reeves/Vuong/Rader

Someday, I’ll love Jess Perini
                                                          the way my broccolini
mesmerises the white cabbage moth
or perhaps the way the rain carves a path through my garden beds
when the second scene to falling
is not waving
                                           or even being of this earth,
in this bacteria-house body. Food for famished worms.

                          Someday I’ll love my distance, itself an eggshell cave,
let nothing too close, for fear of cracks. 
Even my chatty side –
like danger, small children, rash arguments of stars – 
                                                      must be dug, fragmented
bacterially lined, worm food, 
                                                weft with the terror of transformation,
like waiting for your adult features, or bread to rise.

                                                                 I never knew I loved my name, 
can anyone born in a no ‘J’ country,
believe a Jessica?

                                                                      I was never proud of being an Aussie
’til I ran out with fellow ‘deep southerners’
into the streets of Phoenix, 
                                                     sourcing the sound of gunshots in our ears
Americans gaping in our naïve wake.

Someday I will love the cold,
                                                     not just as the numbness in my nerve-damaged fingers,
or the radiance of my red sharp face this June night, 
but as the time my wildest plants flourish. 

Today
former tears unwept
drench my carport
now carpeted with flower beds
my nephew’s face elongates 
half a world
and a pandemic
                                away.

Someday I will love my words, 
                                                 the way I owe distant fields my longing.
But, no.
I owe nothing.
It is more like this: 
                                                       the future is
the mown grass of now, nutrienting fields
a creeping gratitude
            light through the slats
of each new day                               fresh.

It wasn’t always so.

Some days I closed my ears 
                          and disappeared
hiding
silently drumming the bottom of my father’s boat.
Counting the seconds
            minutes
hours
’til someone discovered I was lost.
Remembering the small child, whose love of story smouldered
            unattended
in the trailer out front.
            My mother at her tenderest would call me Jess-ii-CA. 
                                                                                          Still, I love them all.

Someday
Just someday
all of forgiveness
            will stir my curtains. 

Someday I will love the blessed wildfire that is my brain, 
                                                        and I will not think of longing,
and even if I do feel my bucket, drained of its last drops
I will still love the Tempest that was grown of my name. 
                                                              

This day I will forget Yessica
                                                 the ultimate people pleaser
and embrace
the flaming forest ever fanning in my heart.
Never a twig, never a branch to break.
But a forest, full, echoing
Bridged with bird life
a zillion creators, critters of my wildfire
reclaimed,

emerging

            Alive.

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