Jehanne Dubrow

Joy
December 19, 2022 Dubrow Jehanne

Joy

Jean Patou, 1930

 

After you say my beauty
is irrelevant—never mind
the infinite jasmine of my afternoons,
raw blossoms opening
to the air—it’s true
I mourn for a while.

 

That all my roses should go
unloved. This breaks me
like a bottle knocked
from the edge of a vanity.

 

And even when you return,
having decided, yes,
my garden is a world
you want to wander through,
I can’t forget.
If you touch me now,
I rub dirt across your face.
I am briar thorns and animal.

 

Jehanne Dubrow is the author of nine poetry collections, including most recently Wild Kingdom (Louisiana State University Press, 2021), and two books of creative nonfiction, throughsmoke: an essay in notes (New Rivers Press, 2019) and Taste: A Book of Small Bites (Columbia University Press, 2022). Her third book of nonfiction, Exhibitions: Essays On Art & Atrocity, will be published by University of New Mexico Press in 2023. Her writing has appeared in POETRY, New England Review, Colorado Review, and The Southern Review. She is a Professor of Creative Writing at the University of North Texas.