TWO POEMS
by JENN CARSON
Deep vein mnemonic
My six year old
unaware of his delicate beauty
a transitory perfection I have to look away from to grow
accustomed to the pain of its eventual absence
My baby
all smooth skin and elegant arms
flexes his tiny bicep
sees his inky vein popping
says
with wonder
I didn’t know memories were blue
Art & armor
If I let my memory-gaze go soft enough it drifts to the thick periphery of my favorite painscape/my grandmother standing at her easel her studio carpet worn the eaves of the gabled roof sloping sharply blocking out the good light the textured wallpaper the same faded flowers I traced with my fingers as a baby my crib once occupying a corner where her cutting table now sits piled with patterns and plastic bins her hair still holding its curl translucent in the fading day/the tang of the oil paint bites my nostrils and she hums hymns from this morning’s service God and Muse her only friends in a lonely life of childrearing cooking cleaning and dodging my grandfather’s bullets or grinding hips/painting like this for no one/painting when she should be lubricating the gears of the kitchen mixer scrubbing oven grime pretending she enjoys his slippery hands instead she stands guard to her silent wet-paint rebellion swallows the turpentine-fume battle cry and the cancer eats away at her ovaries and her stomach distends as her forearms shrink and the brush vibrates from the effort it takes her to keep it vertical/she slips into bed next to me her flowered nightdress cocooning us while my grandfather snores in the guest room/there’s no room for you up here she tells him/and I didn’t know then that she was gifting me something much more valuable than overworked canvases and crusted paint cans
Jenn Carson is a writer and librarian from New Brunswick. Her non-fiction includes Get Your Community Moving: Physical Literacy Programs for All Ages and Yoga & Meditation at the Library: A Practical Guide for Librarians. She has 28 poems included in Lunch, my favourite season (Atlantika). She was short-listed for the 2017 Iceland Writers Retreat Alumni Award and was nominated for the 2019 Best New Poets anthology. She won the 2019 Library Journal Movers & Shakers award for her physical literacy research and advocacy.
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