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Laura Donnelly

The Jack Loom

​
i.
 
Blue jeans torn in strips, knotted
and loomed, now rolled
before drafts or folded in closets,
faded in a kitchen
thirty years back where I sit
with Great-Grandmother playing
Aggravation, Chinese Checkers,
marbles ticking over the cardboard maze.
Her skin is transparent as Bible pages.
She licks one finger, flips
to another verse.
 
 
ii.
 
Shirts in primary colors
come in from the fields, once thick
warp and weft now a sieve.
Coveralls, curtains, housedresses
of dotted Swiss worn through Michigan
summers. We pick up the red stain
of strawberry like a ghost woven
under our feet.  
 
 
iii.                   
 
Her wicker basket was a bassinet
for castoffs, her scissor’s mouth
measuring waste not
want not.
                                                       
Let the treadle be similarly unrushed.
Let the weft be secure
from breast beam to back.
 
Let the sound of cloth
loosed into cloth
rise again
when we enter the house.



After Blake


Blake’s version of Eve:
          prayer hands slightly parted,
 
body arcing towards God.
          Her skin is the negative space
 
of the painting, a halo
          beneath the curled moon. Or
 
the halo emanates
          from God, his white gown
 
the brightest thing
          in Eden, his body a pillar
 
except for the arm
          that reaches, the thumb
 
relaxed as his palm pulls Eve up –
          And yes, the man sleeps
 
underneath her new feet,
          their limbs almost touching
 
but no sign of rib, no red gash
          in his side. She floats
 
like a dream or the distance
          between Adam’s sleep
 
and God’s hand, or perhaps
          God’s hand measures
 
the distance between
          her white brow and the moon –
 
Blake has not made it clear,
          the hierarchy, if there is
 
hierarchy, but even now
          as God’s hand
 
draws her up (or the moon
          does so), the line
 
of one calf suggests
          motion. Smallest flick
 
of Blake’s wrist. Between them
          the muscle testing
 
its new weight forward
          into world.


Garden Vernacular

          Vernacular gardens, by definition, are gardens of ordinary people
                    ​– Ced Dolder, “Vernacular Gardens”

Ordinary as a glass of milk, a gun,
a trio of stray cats that came to us
from the fields. Shall I name
all the flowers again? Yucca, daylily,
peony, hens-and-chicks – I’m tired of listing them.
Suffice it to say I watered those daylilies
thirty minutes each day, pulled 500 weeds
and dropped them into a Maxwell House tin,
scratched each task from my childhood
chore list as if I could answer
the world’s demands.
                                        When we left,
I followed the angels’ decree: didn’t 
turn back or clap, call or croon. For a long time
I thought history went to the winners,
and we were not them.
 
But then our mother’s new garden
unfurled, winding and strange on a city block –
the gloriosa daisies between cracks
in cement, ferns lapping up the dusky shade,
like hush and wonder. They tended
our secrets until our secrets no longer
needed tending.
 
It was not unusual to see bear cubs
in that garden. It was not unusual
 
to see that garden breathe.







--
Laura Donnelly's second poetry collection, Midwest Gothic, was selected by Maggie Smith for the 2019 Snyder Prize at Ashland Poetry Press. Donnelly is also the author of Watershed (Cider Press Review Editors' Prize), and her poems have appeared in Missouri Review, Indiana Review, Harvard Review, PANK, and elsewhere. Originally from Michigan, she lives in Upstate New York and is on the creative writing faculty at SUNY Oswego.

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  • Home
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  • Issue #27 Spring 2024
    • Issue #27 Art Spring 2024 >
      • Kristina Erny Spring 2024
      • Luiza Maia Spring 2024
      • Christy Lee Rogers Spring 2024
      • Erika Lynet Salvador Spring 2024
      • Marsha Solomon Spring 2024
    • Issue #27 Poetry Spring 2024 >
      • Terry Belew Spring 2024
      • Dustin Brookshire​ & Diamond Forde Spring 2024 Spring 2024
      • Dustin Brookshire​ & Caridad Moro-Gronlier Spring 2024 Spring 2024
      • Charlie Coleman Spring 2024
      • Isabelle Doyle Spring 2024
      • Reyzl Grace Spring 2024
      • Kelly Gray Spring 2024
      • Meredith Herndon Spring 2024
      • Mina Khan Spring 2024
      • Anoushka Kumar Spring 2024
      • Cate Latimer Spring 2024
      • BEE LB Spring 2024
      • Grace Marie Liu​ Spring 2024
      • Sarah Mills Spring 2024
      • Faisal Mohyuddin 2024
      • Marcus Myers Spring 2024
      • Mike Puican Spring 2024
      • Sarah Sorensen Spring 2024
      • Lynne Thompson Spring 2024
      • Natalie Tombasco Spring 2024
      • Alexandra van de Kamp Spring 2024
      • Donna Vorreyer Spring 2024
    • Fiction #27 Spring 2024 >
      • Bryan Betancur Spring 2024
      • Karen George Spring 2024
      • Raja'a Khalid Spring 2024
      • Riley Manning Spring 2024
      • Adina Polatsek Spring 2024
      • Beth Sherman Spring 2024
    • Nonfiction #27 Spring 2024 >
      • Liza Olson Spring 2024
  • Issue #28 Fall 2024
    • Issue #28 Art Fall 2024 >
      • Eric Calloway Fall 2024
      • Matthew Fertel Fall 2024
      • JooLee Kang Fall 2024
      • Jian Kim Fall 2024
      • Robb Kunz Fall 2024
      • Sean Layh Fall 2024
    • Issue #28 Poetry Fall 2024 >
      • Jodi Balas Fall 2024
      • Clayre Benzadón Fall 2024
      • Catherine Broadwall Fall 2024
      • Sara Burge Fall 2024
      • Judith Chalmer Fall 2024
      • Stephanie Choi Fall 2024
      • Sarah Jack Fall 2024
      • Jen Karetnick Fall 2024
      • Ae Hee Lee Fall 2024
      • Svetlana Litvinchuk Fall 2024
      • Mary Lou Buschi Fall 2024
      • Angie Macri Fall 2024
      • Gary McDowell Fall 2024
      • Sam Moe Fall 2024
      • Camille Newsom Fall 2024
      • Elizabeth O'Connell- Thompson Fall 2024
      • Olatunde Osinaike Fall 2024
      • Jessica Pierce Fall 2024
      • Diane Raptosh Fall 2024
      • Isaac Richards Fall 2024
      • Robyn Schelenz Fall 2024
      • Christopher Shipman Fall 2024
      • Alex Tretbar Fall 2024
      • Ruth Williams Fall 2024
      • Shannon K. Winston Fall 2024
      • Wendy Wisner Fall 2024
      • Anne Gerard Fall 2024
    • Issue #28 Fiction Fall 2024 >
      • J​oe Baumann Fall 2024
      • ​Morganne Howell Fall 2024
      • Matt Paczkowski Fall 2024
      • Ryan Peed Fall 2024
      • Gabriella Pitts Fall 2024
      • James Sullivan Fall 2024
  • Issue #29 Spring 2025
    • Issue #29 Art Spring 2025 >
      • Irina Greciuhina Spring 2025
      • Jesse Howard Spring 2025
      • Paul Simmons Spring 2025
      • Marsha Solomon Spring 2025
      • Elzbieta Zdunek Spring 2025
      • Na Yoon Amelia Cha-Ryu Spring 2025
    • Issue #29 Poetry Spring 2025 >
      • Deborah Bacharach Spring 2025
      • Diego Báez Spring 2025
      • Jaswinder Bolina Spring 2025
      • ​Ash Bowen Spring 2025
      • Christian J. Collier Spring 2025
      • ​Shou Jie Eng Spring 2025
      • Sara Fitzpatrick Spring 2025
      • Matthew Gilbert Spring 2025
      • Tammy C. Greenwood Spring 2025
      • Alejandra Hernández ​Spring 2025
      • Ben Kline ​Spring 2025
      • ​David Moolten Spring 2025
      • ​Tamer Mostafa Spring 2025
      • ​Rongfei Mu Spring 2025
      • Cynthia Neely Spring 2025
      • Pablo Otavalo Spring 2025
      • ​Bleah Patterson Spring 2025
      • ​M.A. Scott Spring 2025
      • ​Liam Strong ​ Spring 2025
      • Alexandra van de Kamp Spring 2025
      • ​Cassandra Whitaker Spring 2025
      • Angelique Zobitz Spring 2025
    • Issue #29 Fiction Spring 2025 >
      • Vanessa Blakeslee Spring 2025
      • K. J. Coyle Spring 2025
      • Meredith MacLeod Davidson Spring 2025
      • Jessica Mosher Spring 2025
    • Issue #29 Nonfiction Spring 2025 >
      • JM Huscher Spring 2025
      • Qurrat ul Ain Raza Abbas Spring 2025