Read More: A brief Q&A with Jane Zwart
Matriarchy
Democracy of crochet
geometries, of hyperbolic
lines, realm of yarns
and yarn anemones;
commonwealth of riffs
and reefs exaggerated
into life. Parliament
of honeycomb, of quilting
bees, of the crackerjack
quadratic. Birthplace
of lace fences; motherland
of condoms trimmed
in ribbon, of sheep-gut
raincoats, silk bows
tied around their collars.
The Missing
The sky is larger above the casualty,
above the woman reserved
for something sudden—
think of the athlete’s enlarged heart,
which goes unseen until.
Until one of us goes missing,
leaving child or till unattended; until
someone drags one of us
through door jambs or past root wads
(for days no one will speak
of dragging the pond)
the condition hovers, invisible, as sky
is invisible. Not until
something bursts do we see it:
an overlarge heart, an ether heaped up […]
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Sub Rosa
My mother spoke of a box,
tapping a place between two ribs;
she meant interiority. She did not
have to say that the box was velvet,
a sprung mousetrap, topaz studs
looted from its paper tongue;
instead she said my dead brother
alone had seen inside. I am
still unsure if that was true. […]
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The Vanities
Both my grandmothers had desks in their bedrooms. I thought
they were desks.
I knew I, too, would stare at my face in a wreath
until I found what was not anodyne. But when the time comes,
I thought, I will not want a velvet bench. I won’t write in colored
pencil.
The time did come. The seat has a back, and I type,
scrutinizing myself, tucked into a vanity. I thought it was a desk.
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Jane Zwart teaches at Calvin University, where she also co-directs the Calvin Center for Faith & Writing. Her poems have appeared in Poetry, Ploughshares, Threepenny Review, Gulf Coast, and TriQuarterly, as well as other journals and magazines.
Read More: A brief Q&A with Jane Zwart