Jennifer Reeser

BIO

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.Jennifer Reeser is the author of four full-length poetry collections. Former editor of The Paris Review, X. J. Kennedy, wrote that her debut collection, An Alabaster Flask, (winner of the Word Press First Book Prize), “ought to have been a candidate for a Pulitzer.” Her third book, Sonnets from the Dark Lady and Other Poems, was a finalist for the Donald Justice Prize. Her most recent title, The Lalaurie Horror, has remained an Amazon bestseller in the category of epic poetry since its release in September of 2013. Her poems, critical essays, and translations of French and Russian literature have appeared nationally, internationally, and in Internet venues such as POETRY, The National Review, Able Muse, The Hudson Review, Light Quarterly, Unsplendid and Louisiana Literature. Her writing has appeared in numerous anthologies, including Longman’s college textbook, An Introduction to Literature, edited by Dana Gioia and X.J. Kennedy, and Poets Translate Poets: A Hudson Review Anthology. Her work is mandatory reading in state universities, writing programs and high schools across the United States. She has received awards in writing from Pulitzer Prize winning author, Robert Olen Butler, from former Poetry Society of America Vice-President, Director of The World Order of Narrative and Formalist Poets, Doctor Alfred Dorn, and from The Lyric magazine. She is the former assistant editor of Iambs and Trochees. Her translations of the Russian poet, Anna Akhmatova, are authorized by the FTM Agency, Moscow. She is a mentor with the West Chester Poetry Conference, the largest annual convention on poetry in the United States. She lives amid the bayous of southern Louisiana with her husband and children. Her website is found at www.jenniferreeser.com

 

The Charts and Wheels

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The charts and wheels with reason reassure

me steadily that you and I are one,

by quark and quasar, symbol, sign and sun,

till — like the true believer — I endure

their catechisms: no love is more pure

than this, no fury more fantastic, none

more ruling, unrelenting and mature.

For you, I shift in shape, and drop my role,

deciphering each synergistic dream.

Removed from proof, conceit and self-control

lie practices I’ve pushed to an extreme,

till I have let the double of my soul

appear intangible as legends seem.

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The Jealous She-Raccoon Among Garbage Cans

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Sphinx moths amass, the bandit night is young,

But no one has invited me inside.

The taste of bobcat lingers on my tongue,

A predator. The things I have to hide!

Observing cold, contrary crossing stars,

Behold the brilliant scavenger – my rotten

Eggs consumed with truffles, caviars.

How I would thrill to fill her mouth with cotton

Candy, make her ride the clever cat

If only one long, vulgar time, to kill

This persevering cord. That would be that –

Feel nothing, neither good will nor ill will.

The wild is no suggested place to care.

If fright may threaten love…not there, not there….

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