Welcome to National Poetry Month, 2016! We’re celebrating all month long. Each day we will bring you a poem we love–a selection from one of our published or forthcoming collections.
Today’s featured poet is Jenny Drai, author of the chapbook The New Sorrow Is Less Than the Old Sorrow (2015) and the full-length collection Wine Dark, which is due out this month.
I LIE TO YOU WHEN I SLEEP BECAUSE I AM NOT SLEEPING
I could
not pin an
orbit on
any sour cherub.
Chance is a
perfume
of bones. All I wanted
was for you to be careless I rode
through a path of beach
trees, thinking of watercress for the miniature
sandwiches. We witness
collapse, swarm
up through the bushes, hard red
manzanita, scale
ladders, filter what is happening from what is not.
Where I am is ambrosia to a soldier of
sleep. You rest here, beside
me, like a warm cat.
Intricacy wanes.
A low float.
Eventually, even I will
dream of poppies.
______________________________
Jenny Drai is the author of two collections of poetry, Wine Dark (Black Lawrence Press) and [the door] (Trembling Pillow Press), two poetry chapbooks, The New Sorrow Is Less Than the Old Sorrow (Black Lawrence Press) and :Body Wolf: (Horse Less Press), as well as Letters to Quince (winner of the Deerbird Novella Prize from Artistically Declined Press). Her poetry has appeared in or is forthcoming in American Letters and Commentary, Colorado Review, Denver Quarterly, Dusie, Handsome, Jellyfish, New American Writing, and The Volta, as well as many other journals. She has worked every odd job imaginable and lived all over the place. She currently resides in Bonn, Germany, and is at work on a novel. She recently became Associate Poetry Editor for Drunken Boat.
