Eclipse Study #1 – Jennifer Kemnitz

She is the space oddity hurtling

through the weekend of a full eclipse

 

She lingers in the aisles:

strange energy in her wake

uses crying-emoji lip balm

to express the loss of a child—

I should be wary, but am fascinated

by the rounded, yellow case and blue pictotears,

by her sad, sweet, tired face, her tousled, sandy hair

like a child’s after a too-long, summer’s day.

 

She finds herself a victim:

of the court system, which took her “child/product;”

of people she thought were her friends;

of the Hollywood system,

as she cannot remember

how she got her star on the Walk of Fame,

and the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce

won’t give her any information.

 

She finds enemies:

in those who have taken

all of her good ideas and so her film credits

and in the legion of actresses

who use her exact shade of hair dye for a part

so that she can’t buy it for herself.

 

She says she has to be so, so careful,

these days, what she co-creates

 

 

 

 

Jennifer Kemnitz is a great defender of plant life, which she finds uniquely, innately intelligent. Her work has been featured in or is forthcoming from CALYX, Cirque, Rain, and the Kerf, and has been anthologized by Poetry on the Lake, among others. She has served as Managing Editor of VoiceCatcherand is a bookseller in the PPR at Powell’s City of Books.

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