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Three poems by JENNIFER
FRANK
curated by Susan McAllister
of Harwood Art Center and Harwood Review
Susan McAllister
has selected these poems in response to the art exhibits by Naomi
Shersty
and Amy
Traylor.
Innominate
Invert
Seven
Sisters
Jennifer
Frank's bio
Innominate
It all rests
on your shoulders, as they say. Runs
down your spine. It's in your hands now, or the pit
of your stomach. The weight of it all, described
in terms our bodies can relate to, something to move
along appendages and strange branches of synapses.
These ribs bridge
the deepest part.
Or so I imagine, if I were driving these lanes,
highways of thighs, and crossing uncharted
arteries. Flashing signals and obscure symbols
direct me to nowhere I recognize.
We all ache and
itch and make wrong turns.
I try to find the exit into this body, navigate
the arrangement of great vessels and soft tissue.
Instead, I get lost in the space between innominate
bones, where connections are complicated and
difficult to
pronounce. Vertebrae sigh and joints
crack in the night, tell the story of their dislocation.
On the edge of abandoned villages, walls scatter
their stones. I rest along the crest of my ilium, look for
an open station where I can buy a map with a simple
legend, directions to an unnamed place.
Invert
I.
My spine's a
stone walkway that leads me
to remembered and logical places. Still
I get lost. Ideas branch in too many directions,
distract me with red leaves and the weave
of thin twigs. I hold onto things for too long.
Every mistake an heirloom porcelain vase.
II.
My spine's a
ladder rung with bones
that can hold my weight, if I leave a few
chipped habits and sorrows behind. I climb
down into a place of seeds and pale petals.
Roots show me how to take in and pass on,
hold nothing.
Down here is
where the story started.
The one I retold incorrectly for so many
years, forgot the details and main characters,
the plot that twisted like an old pebbled path.
I start over, relearn the fiction, how it all began.
Seven Sisters
From their new
perch in the sky, the Pleiades follow the lines
below, decipher the scribbles and scars the way we interpret
constellations and other celestial arrangements. They read
the leaves floating in streams, follow the phases of forests.
Decisions are made based on the lifeline in the green palm
of a valley. Connections calm the mind like the steady rhythm
of the all-night train they watch cross the landscape.
The shimmer of mountaintops speckled with snow
indicates a safe passage into daylight.
The Seven Sisters
were also nymphs in the train of Artemis.
Their tales are vague and contradictory. Storylines blur as they
traverse the terrain; explanations follow predictions and best
guesses. Whether the sisters were doves or pigeons before they
settled into the evening sky, their dark perch in a cloud described
by astronomers as a train wreck, a cosmic collision.
I am the youngest
of seven daughters. Family ties are at times thin
threads, roughly stitched and at risk of coming loose. I once
thought
of my sisters and I as birds, not knowing then the connection
to the myth, only sensing the urge for flight. I still don't
know
the associations of our travels. Our orbits might, from a great
distance,
form the shape of something of substance, a bright cluster that
sends
more light than it realizes. The start of some idea that needs
seven points to map its way into the world.
Bio
Jennifer Frank
has worked on several projects involving poetry and the visual
arts. Her most recent was Cross-Pollination, an exhibit at the
Hardwood Art Center of her collaboration with artist Becky Holtzman.
Her poems have appeared in the GW Review, Phoebe and local anthologies
as well as inside the occasional city bus.
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