Jennifer Chapis



Inverse Circus


"When I look at anything for a long time,
it shrinks down to a toy." Donald Revell


blue tip of a lead tongue

lyrics puppeteer when spoken


coffee beans crunch teeth to dirt

something scarcely edible

crumbs the mouth loose


ventriloquist's divergence-

"I am the tree that plants some shoes"


*

a mother's face grows on a snake

zeal wraps itself around


buckeye butterflies

   release                    disappear

                                 (wings like rogue fingers

                                 up a child's nose)


*

feral chickens run revolving moments

neck their way down

coop of the head


become the body re-attached

manifested anamnesis


gray clouds grow mirrors and tabletops

our eyes broad-minded and divulged








Reincarnation


"What would love do if I died?" Adonis



torn hare at the water's edge


rain-heat

striation


(two hundred million years)

stone-leather


*

you are a pollen-colored fox with a restless gut

stillness burns beside you




chrysanthemum's double head


*


storm clouds furrow

a thousand brows


vernal autograph

recursive earth


rain's

grizzled snout






e-mail the poet at jennifer.chapis@nyu.edu
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