Alice and Jenny in Their Land
In the thick-fingered January nights Alice and Jenny build
rooms of oceans and tall ships with oars miles long.
The intricate masts: firm birch braided with cedar,
resin-sealed and sewn with roots thicker than Jenny’s wrists.
Moonlight reflects white off the walls of the room and over
the sea. They walk the lengths of the oars, chewing mint leaves
Alice likes to taste on Jenny’s fingers and teeth. No sun to rise.
Soft waves grazing the ships. And when Alice builds a spar
high enough to skim the moon, Jenny touches her arm,
watches her lips, and says, enough.
—
This selection is from Alyse Knorr’s book Annotated Glass, available from Furniture Press Books. Purchase your copy here!
Alyse Knorr is the author of Copper Mother (Switchback Books, 2015), Annotated Glass (Furniture Press Books, 2013), and the chapbook Alternates (dancing girl press, 2014). Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Denver Quarterly, ZYZZYVA, Front Porch, Drunken Boat, Caketrain, and The Southern Poetry Anthology (Texas Review Press, 2012), among others. Alyse has completed writing residencies at the Millay Colony, Vermont Studio Center, and the New York Mills Arts Retreat. She is a co-founding editor of Gazing Grain Press and teaches English at the University of Alaska Anchorage.
Leslie LaChance‘s poems have appeared in Quiddity, JMWW, the Best of the Net Anthology, Apple Valley Review, The Greensboro Review, Juked, The Birmingham Poetry Review, Slow Trains, Free Lunch, Chronogram, and Appalachian Journal. She also edits Mixitini Matrix: A Journal of Creative Collaboration. Her chapbook, How She Got That Way, appears in the quartet volume Mend & Hone from Toadlily Press.
