Jane Springer

Paper
June 25, 2017 Springer Jane

Paper

 

Damned if I’ll be the woman who collects mass produced throw pillows counts her
county’s condoms shoots chemicals to drench the porch
hornet on the way to recycle the obits hums Somalian
rap—young—five minutes till the end one spring considers
the GPS tracking in relation to the
real cost of cell surveillance buys a hand
gun walks the dog dips Fritos in peanut
butter Googles Selfie! sixteen ways
from Sunday.

There are two kinds of
origami: The one kind is a dragon with 1000
scales cut so intricately wings
flap unfolding—this takes hours of exact labor
it takes a cliff’s cave of jewels, lace you’d commit hara-
kiri for to see or touch again. The other kind’s a gentle bend
in the plain paper tower’s middle makes me cry, I won’t be that woman

either—sifting strangers’ receipts from the ashes of downed town silos to
say whose fault is this move to the new age
of Victorian? Whose fist clutches
shifting sand? Nor plunder
coins to match
the old beloved’s eyes that
wander fresh possibility—being
no mechanical & flag wrapped patriot of one
country, but swear allegiance to margin’s error, headline: Careful, Concrete

Crushed by Falling Sheet Where the Greedy Surrender to New Foliage.

Jane Springer is the author of Dear Blackbird, and Murder Ballad. Forthcoming is Moth. Her work’s been featured in The Best American Poetry and Pushcart anthologies, and she’s received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the MacDowell Artist’s Colony, and the Whiting Foundation.