Bloom Creative Writing: Poetry by Jeneva Burroughs Stone

With this work by Jeneva Burroughs Stone, we continue to highlight original fiction and poetry from writers who either published their first book at 40 or after, or who have yet to publish a book. Writers interested in submitting work should see our guidelines.

Asana

Mor Shani on Unsplash

The door at the top of the stairs 
is shut. I did not make it through 

although I can see light’s rectangular 
outline etched there. On this other side 

above me, so many risers and treads 
up and up, laughter wafts down to me 

here alone at the base of things. 


Sometimes I think of my classmate John 
with his colleagues in the burning skyscraper. 

I read they climbed to the roof expecting 
rescue. Even when descent remains possible 

I think our minds are wired to ascend. 


I struggle with table pose when I practice 
yoga: Cat pose, convex. Cow pose, concave. 

Leveling presents difficulties, gives pause—
that, there, moment of hesitation—

That’s it, the moment you choose. 

Mutability Canto

I still use she/her, my child says while
a question, for how long? envelops

the car as resistant air streams invisible
over hood windshield roof and even

beneath us wheels spin on their axles
the highway behind us as gray to me as

that before—the route to and from college—&
she unspools deep background for me

on the queer/trans/bi/feminist communities
divergent & meshing & foiling one another

online in-fighting of who/what/when makes
a woman or a man (here I’m hating binaries

with the blood lust of a parent whose contract
to protect a child has long expired but still

possesses the receipt) who said you have to be just
one person or another? thinks this cis-het-woman

conventional all her life but what I manage
to say? I read Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble

in its first edition studying for my doctorate—she
replies, thanks mom

*

Each day I still strap on my maternal
armor—breasts’ elastic heft, dense & full

two shields shifted in lace cups braced
by underwire against menopausal sag

and in the mirror now I glimpse
the man I might have been: stiff hairs

emerging from my chin’s tip & corners
of my face heavier & more aligned in

masculine precision than when my mother
once said, you’re a square-jawed Swede

*

Transformation saved a legion
of mythic maidens & heroes alterity

a twist & wriggle from a clutch of
desperate ends & sometimes I grasp

that change is not alteration but
a refraction of the light as my children

ripple away at the edges of the dropped
stone of my thoughts of them endless

metamorphoses of shape/form/being
in a world that works to reduce each

of us as we shimmer in its grip

*

The day he told us, pls use he/him, I
recalled the moment his older brother’s

neuromuscular rictus set in—sudden
the way change becomes apparent: he

the first of us to shift radical like
an imploding star before disabled

began its past & future tensing—
a movement rolling his wheelchair

(& all of us) forward at warp speed
into our future & (un)expectant

selves as a line of star dots become
dashes (a highway’s visual cue to shift

a lane or two or even three over) rush
like photons unbound & streaming toward

a vanishing point a future closing in
then opening at the still center of

our selves—I have two sons (& always
have) or as my aunts used to say before

you were a twinkle in your mother’s eye: you
were (you are you always have been)

what else is love

Cassandra Considers a Change in Direction

Rhinestones red in one direction
from the other brilliant white

dusk falls no longer on black ships
cast upon a wine-dark sea now

rivers of tarmac wind as far as
my eyes can see and farther than

the second sight I was cursed with—
I warned Agamemnon (victorious)

not to return: saw Ajax violate me
before the towers fell: glimpsed

my triumph in blood filaments
winding through the waters of

my captor’s bath—I told him never
go home. No one believed me—

the future most people can see steps
into the image of itself day after day

as casually as a woman slips on
her jeans one leg first and then

the other on her way somewhere
only to return to the self-same

house because habits of home
are hard to break and each person

idling in each vehicle out there
at dusk I see waiting for their own

headlights or taillights to replace
the set just ahead inching along

length by length moving forward
steadily as one future displaces

a lingering past notched by passing
possible exits while drawn to one that

must be taken never wondering
what is my fate that I must escape it

or will I ever return from where
I’ve been? Does the future meet us

where we are or are we driven into it?

Mohammad Alizade on Unsplash

Parallax

The injera arrives folded and neatly cut into four perfect squares,
teff-grey on a white plate. Behind my son in cubes of shelving are
two espresso cups with rims striped red, green, and yellow. We are
four persons settled on each side of a table.

Somewhere in the world there’s balance instead of entropy, a tree
trunk divided in two arabesques framing power lines. I would
embrace the world but the physiology of my arms is more limited
than my consciousness.

Here are two people on a single night crossing Christopher Street in
the rain, faces lit by streetlights. I’m one of them, the night I fell in
love. The other, you, explains the destruction of Sarajevo as a war
over alphabets. Attempts to simplify are, just that, not enough.

Each time I gave birth a clearing opened the way trees grow to
accommodate regular disturbances in the air, like the draft of
vehicles along a street. Then they wrapped you and placed you in
my arms. And then another you.

In Sarajevo the luge run is pockmarked with bullets. In Ethiopia the
famine has lifted. All of this only temporary. In another restaurant,
plates strewn and smeared with bits of food, four people push back
their chairs in no established sequence and with no particular
rhythm, and run.

Don’t Blink

—for Kevin “Mc” McIlvoy 

at the end of your life you
must not blink even to avoid

Chris Man on Unsplash

the impact of your death
as it arrives with the shock

wave of a blast you’ve been
expecting one afternoon

to reach you although its
initial concentric buffets

have brushed mild as gusts
of summer breeze still

harbingers of an inevitable
always ongoing detonation

bursting grapes on a vine
the pop pop pop roses

make as their blooming
fulfills the tight shudder

of each bud or an infant
widens her mouth for

the first time mimicking
the final blast that must

originate from within though
you’ve expected the impact to

arrive from without imploding
cells nerves insensate the heart

(always the heart) speeding
or slowing regardless of any

excitement or lack thereof —
don’t blink—though you’ve lived

on this planet adequately
enough and with imperfect

intent—keep yourself vivid
until the very end because

all of this world was once
yours and you are required

to hold it steady as a server’s
platter balanced on a weary

arm until placed on a table
for those who will enjoy it next

Howard Korn

Jeneva Stone (she/her) is a poet, essayist and advocate. She’s the author of Monster (Phoenicia Publishing, 2016), a mixed-genre meditation on caregiving, disability & medicine. Her work has appeared in New England Review, American Poetry Review, Waxwing, Split This Rock, Scoundrel Time, Pleiades, and many others. She is the recipient of fellowships from MacDowell, Millay Arts and VCCA. Her opinion writing has been featured in The Washington Post and CNN Digital. She holds an MFA from the Warren Wilson Program.

Jeneva volunteers for several health care and disability rights groups. She is the Blog Manager for Little Lobbyists, a family-led organization advocating for health care of children with complex medical needs and disabilities; the Maryland Community Ambassador for the Rare Action Network, and a member of the Montgomery County Maryland Commission on People with Disabilities.