https://www.albany.edu/offcourse
 http://offcourse.org
 ISSN 1556-4975

OffCourse Literary Journal

 Published by Ricardo and Isabel Nirenberg since 1998


 

Poems by Mark Jackley

 

MONDAY

small words in
the long part
of the afternoon

after I laid him off I drove him home

 

DREAM OF DRIFTING

I curl up under a bush
to give the soul a chance
to hug the bones, grasp a rib
as if a tool to make
something that will last,
possibly a home.

 

DREAM OF US

A storm kept changing the subject.
It left the tobacco fields
glistening and ecstatic,
bent the hallelujah pines,
kissed the crumbled kudzu-
bearded chimneys whose
homes left them, pretending
to be dust.

 

THE LIFESPAN OF MOTHS

In truth,
we all have
learner’s permits.

Swerving
in tall grasses,
wrecklessly alive,

they make
their own lanes.


Mark Jackley is a poet living in northwestern Virginia. His poems have appeared in Fifth Wednesday, Natural Bridge, and other journals and his book of poems Many Suns Will Rise is available from Main Street Rag Press.



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