A Non-Commercial Decade Of Dominance!

Cosmoetica     Bylines 1 2 3 4 5 6    Schneider Online 1 2 3 4 5    Archives     GFSI Essays     Seek & Destroy   Books   Schneider Fiction     True Life     Cinemension

 

To search Cosmoetica, click here. Despite this site's providing over 100,000 searches per month to Google, that company refuses to allow me to customize a site search w/o wanting to charge me $1000/yr for the privilege of providing them with customers and revenues.

Bookmark and Share

Jessica is married to Dan Schneider. She has written poems since the age of 12 & has written some great poems.

 

Jessica's new blog: Pandu's Season

Jessica Schneider's Poems:  "And God Only Lets Me Live To Sang About It"    Another Woman + translated into French by Jean Migrenne   Extension For Her + translated into French by Jean Migrenne  From the Box of the Zoo Fox     Gala And The Cliff    In The Tightness Of My Sonnet   In Time, Andree Rexroth... + translated into French by Jean Migrenne   Moth Lost In A Laboratory   My Grandmother's Pearls   Observation....   Orchids and everything since     The Animals Lay Time      Una, Instead      Wild Poppies + translated into French by Jean Migrenne

“And God only lets me live to sang about it”
-Ella Fitzgerald, August, 1956

The twitch of BarB-Q hitchin’ the wind must’a pulled us
into summertime, twenty-some miles southbound to Memphis. 

Through the high cotton, the boys seemed as hungry, much
then when their jazz must’a felt the need to stretch 

like I know mine did. It had been at least two hours or so
since we last stopped. I can’t know fo’ sure, but sumpthin’ 

kept on tellin’ me so. Couldn’t’a stopped just anywheres
for rest, y’know. “That gal gits up and sangs

like sumpthin’ I’ze never seen!”, Ol’ Chick use’to say.
But 23-skiddoo is what I can’t do

to stop the buses or trains, the way those white gals can,
tied to their Hollywood fames. “Bess in her old folk dress” 

is what I use’to think when Pops sung to me
you is my woman now” from the throne of his throat.

In ’39 I fell into ballads the way y’all would fall
into love; not realizin’ you’d done it till y’had 

stories to tell, sumpthin’ to live for.
Southbound, twenty-some miles to Memphis, 

and we keeps on keepin’ on, till the good Lord takes us
where we needs to git. “I....want sumpthin’....

to live for....” We’s almost there. But I ain’t
no musician. I use what I got- people know me.

Just like the song say, “From sea ta shinin’ sea.”
I can burrow inta this continent’s skin.

Every syllable I makes gits these boys
and pulls’em home. They’ll git with their wives.

Make babies. I’ll git off once I’m where I needs to git.
Just till we hits twenty-some miles from here, 

southbound, to Memphis. My Ma use’to tell me,
Baby, if you’ze can stop traffic, you halfway wheres  

ya needs ta git!” It’s been seventeen years since this trip began,
too long a way for any gal’s way home.

Copyright Ó by Jessica Schneider

A video of this poem can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6nOqPRIOrNs&list=UUN5kTfj5u8XcTBg51Z65EKw 

Another Woman

Sophie Tolstoy

 

How awful to ache for old habits, habits that hook

perfection once surrendered when wed. 

 

A diary once again, begins me.  Outside,

a world slants backwards, far past January

 

windows, crossing slumbered hills, pale sheeted,

a turn of body, awakening

 

the drowsed polar pavement.  The bedding

rises flat, uninhibited

 

snow.  Sprays of frost taper

ice cusps to houses, murmur, dull as diligence,

 

one-sided.  And I am inside, watching.  This

is a good time to begin

 

without motion or mourning

sickness, rapid blinkings made to break

 

the machine that warms and works, milks,

knits, and walks without thinking,

 

without looking, when one is quiet

at reading or cooking.  But who am I

 

kidding.  I am no writer.  Just winter-

less applause, heavy under the lost

 

thumb of enthusiasm.

The stars, moon, sky, and sun all coincide.

 

Distractions yellowed with age,

multitudes.  Our children flock and come to think

 

One ought to have something else

to love as well.  Thoughts I have,

 

and the means to contort

them.  So very happy, am I

 

with cleverness.  Not by my own

life grown tired with tenderness,

 

green with energy.  Far from loveliness, I stand.  Idle,

not by nature, under the somber order:

 

I am only as slow as the world

allows me to be.  I wish for meadows and noon, magnolia

 

abstractions that leave scent when they swelter.

A crow fissures my wanting

 

on the tree, branches my skirt.  Two boughs

up, I defy attachments.  Its veins have never felt

 

so contained. Patiently,

I fear my children will forget

 

their mother if I begin to think this way, his way,

in jealousy, loving more than myself.

 

I hear the world’s startled choir, bells affirming

sanctity.  Tomorrow I’ll thank The Church

 

for my family.  O, how I would love to believe

in them! Tumultuous anchors

 

husky and brazen as unkept men, resonating

homes, far-crested January seas that drench

 

small sleep, and bong

features flat as watercolor.

 

Copyright Ó by Jessica Schneider

 

A video of this poem can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ug-_W8Qnnks&list=UUN5kTfj5u8XcTBg51Z65EKw 

 

Autre Femme

Sophie Tolstoï

 

Affreuse nostalgie d’habitudes passées au placard

des perfections d’une vie maritale.

 

Première page de mon journal, encore. Dehors,

glisse à rebours d’un monde loin des fenêtres

 

de janvier, par les monts assoupis,

drapé de lin pâle, tournure, réveil-matin

 

d’une rue polaire engourdie. Literie

en haut-plateau de neiges

 

sans complexe. Givre en épis

au faîte des maisons, routine ruminée,

 

parti pris. À l’abri, je regarde. C’est

le bon moment pour commencer

 

à vaquer, sans vague à l’aube,

papilloter, dégommer

 

la machine qui réchauffe, travaille, allaite,

tricote et va sans penser

 

ni regarder, dans le silence,

au livre ou au fourneau.

 

À d’autres ! Je n’écris pas. Mon hiver

croule sous les marques

 

d’un manque d’enthousiasme.

Lune, étoiles, ciel et soleil, tout fait un.

 

Dérivatifs jaunis par le temps,

les multitudes. Nos enfants affluent avec l’idée

 

qu’il devrait y avoir quelque chose d’autre

à aimer, en plus. Mes pensées,

 

j’ai les moyens

de les accommoder. L’intelligence

 

me fait tant plaisir. Mais pas ma vie,

fanée de tendresse,

 

verte d’énergie. Loin de la beauté, plantée là,

immobile, non par nature, sous l’ordre chagrin,

 

je n’ai de lenteur que celle que me prête

le monde. Je veux des prés à midi, des magnolias

 

de rêve, odorants dans leur profusion.

Dans l’arbre, un corbeau déchire ma disette,

 

Les rameaux mon jupon. Deux branches

plus haut, je nargue les amarres : ces veines-là

jamais ne se sont senties si à l’étroit. Patiente,

je crains que mes enfants n’oublient

 

leur mère si je me prends à penser ainsi, comme lui,

jalousement, à aimer plus que moi-même.

 

J’entends le sursaut du monde en chœur, le carillon

de sainteté. Demain je rendrai grâce à l’Église

 

pour les miens. Oh, comme j’aimerais

y croire ! Bronzes de rogomme, flibustiers,

 

tumulte sous les toits,

écume et lointaines lames de janvier

 

fracassées sur le sommeil léger,

traits écrasés en aquarelle.

Translation Copyright © by Jean Migrenne

Extension for Her
    * for Chia

Never before has one been so befuddled
by the woods.  Night faces twist out of pine,
those secrets in the roots- (they know where she is
hidden).  Oaks shape hands, motion into rhyme,
profile.  Twigged spaces streak indifference
over the shallow meld, sky, clues swaddled
by the blank call of spruce.
                                           Daylight interjects
with birds, and on-looking, is the window
facing the woods, between the openness
that intimidates most.  This place no longer
perches my cat, a screen blown in by rain
escapes me.  How memories rearrange
a fairness we cannot understand.  Below
understated grasps, still I wish for her.

Copyright Ó by Jessica Schneider

Je cherche mon chat
   *À Chia

Jamais auparavant ils ne m'ont tant saoulée,
ces bois. La pinède faite nuit de grimaces,
puise dans les secrets, (l'arbre sait où il se
cache). Les chênes manigancent des silhouettes
rimées. Les branches strient de leur indifférence
un fourre-tout de ciel et d'indices qu'étouffe
le silence des sapins.
                                    Le jour s'interpose
en oiseaux. La fenêtre donne sur les bois,

mais s'entremet en espace qui tellement
intimide. Quel est, au lieu du chat perché,
l'effet d'une toile que gonfle une rafale
de pluie? Ce que le souvenir peut imposer
à la  beauté défie l'entendement. Tout reste
geste manqué, mais je cherche encore mon chat.

Translation Copyright © by Jean Migrenne

From the Box of the Zoo Fox  [HEAR THIS POEM READ ON OMNIVERSICA SHOW 8!]

Consciousness blinks. The star of the eye seems 
to recall a swiftness into being
young. Barking at play, the kin of wild
terrain junctures to relocation whether
his willingness played or not. Now all is gone,
as captivity seasons freedom’s wave.

A cage distinguishes his days as they wave,
these visitors who pass and stare. For what seams
inhabit an Arctic having now gone
artificial in glass surrounds? Being
a zoo-boxed fox, the native of chilled weather,
his sides attend a circling all the while

repetitive as dream on dream. Charging while
an earth invades an earth’s enclosure, the wave
settles its grazing eye. He wonders whether
curiosity is worth this space. Seems
evolution had a trick in mind when being
planned, a pup among a mother’s pups, gone

awry. Into summer now, he is too gonzo
to remember his wintered twist of interest. While
fowl and frogs plea for the wind to cease being,
the Arctic creeps to the shore’s northern waives.
The sea keeps creatures moving at what sees
a city of their own demise, crisp weathered

ice continuing. For what is whither
but the orb of wander? All chasing has gone
graced, in embracing his cage at what seems
to shine. For dimness always is the wild
nocturne. There is no light, only dream that waives
under the slip of pasture and plain, a non-being

who muscles between the wheels of his being.
A cage awakens in a stir unwaived
beneath the crawled in place. All effort has gone
through glass. Nerves clutch in shadow-like vane, while
silenced in tracing, a fibrous seal
unentering, nor slipping freedom. Whether

a fox dream matters or not as real or seemed,
one cannot know in grasping for weathered
glaciers, unending worlds of world, the wild wild.

Copyright Ó by Jessica Schneider [Reprinted from The Avatar Review]

A video of this poem can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICSgkk3CuuA&list=UUN5kTfj5u8XcTBg51Z65EKw 

Gala and the Cliff
              * after Dali¢

                             Does the self not tremble at what it snares,
                             decide its evolution, gain and loss,
                             and count its shares?
                                            Thus it is done: and she
closes, young, in his eye, new company
steers the path, and takes what that flare will lead.
Doll-laced and prized, she births in his caress,
which only he can see, full torso, limbless
and white. A canvas makes hands, upholds dead
grace from nymph to wife, Galatea’s untouched

draft invades. Only which needs more? A fossiled,
solitary skull, or a push by the craft
that traced her, naked as the world remembers,
marriaged under, as tiger and swan, she rivals
what the artist’s drop of time would gravely lend.

Copyright Ó by Jessica Schneider

A video of this poem can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KoZqcpiBpJk&list=UUN5kTfj5u8XcTBg51Z65EKw 

In time, Andree Rexroth….
           · for Kenneth

Would life continues, ten thousand years from now,
as it ever has, the always shifting sun,
into summer photons, casting its hunt
of your skin, as we walked young and alone,
and listened for the hiss the creek made over
its cobbled way. That song will surely fade
the anonymous air of days.  We thought
they would not come. They have.
                                  If there was ever
an evolution, and you existed, once
as some primitive being, tiny in its form
of known flesh, a timeless piece of afternoon
and tenderness, I would still you, your ash
scattered in tangible place, where your poems made
my life, my thoughts, my ten thousand years ago.  

Copyright Ó by Jessica Schneider

A video of this poem can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Bja4ZunJVc&list=UUN5kTfj5u8XcTBg51Z65EKw 

À dix mille ans, Andrée Rexroth….

           · À Kenneth

La vie, je la voudrais à dix mille ans d'ici
toujours là, par le soleil toujours, changée en
particules d'été, projetée en poursuite
de ta peau, comme au temps où nous allions à deux,
seuls au monde, écouter le ruisseau sur son lit
de galets. Car ce chant couvrira, j'en suis sûre,
l'anonyme voix des jours. Que nous ne pensions
pas voir échus. Et pourtant.
                                    Si jamais au cours
d'une évolution tu avais existé,
être primitif, minuscule bout de chair
identifiée, fragment toujours d'après-midi
et de tendresse, tu serais bien là pour moi,
cendres répandues où tes poèmes ont fait
ma vie, mes pensées, à dix mille ans d'aujourd'hui.

Translation Copyright © by Jean Migrenne 

Moth Lost in a Laboratory

A beauty circumvents that which beguiles.
Swarmed, such creature’s willful sounded plight
frees into moth, substance of the spiral.

Do the eyes not soften upon the tile,
among the whimsical gesture-sifted flight?
A beauty circumvents that which beguiles.

Aside a wall, tilted wings, brazen, while
nearing investigation: a severed sight
frees into moth, substance of the spiral.

Toward the cosmos, artificial light files
between air’s shifting flee into flight.
A beauty circumvents that which beguiles.

In landing, where the dishroom is, docile,
it commands, dashing spans of whispered height,
frees into moth, substance of the spiral.

Textured wings, swift in horizontal style,
cross tethered interiors of light.
A beauty circumvents that which beguiles,
frees into moth, substance of the spiral.

Copyright © by Jessica Schneider

A video of this poem can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IcfZJSl56K8&list=UUN5kTfj5u8XcTBg51Z65EKw 

My Grandmother’s Pearls

 

Just after Christmas, is how I remember

the cling of Chicago—I’d find

it, when you leaned in to hug me,

rearranging your stance to suit

the gifts in each arm. I was eleven, and eyed

every one.

 

“In a few days, it will be 1987,”

I’d think—and how each time we stayed up

and waited for it to arrive. That became the year

Jackie Gleason died. It happened at the end

of June, and then I saw you, that following

December, as I always had.

Then became another twenty plus two.

 

In 2009, just before they buried you,

the afternoon pinched

to a hush, graying under the press

of cloud. My limbs defied the January

cold, as I watched your being

lowered into history.

 

I thought too, of many things,

but mostly how they painted you

without your smile,

and for that I could not recognize

this form as that of you.

 

Your daughters—my aunts—gave me a necklace

of your pearls to wear at your wake, where I stood

watching you, weakening

was I, beneath such mortuary lights,

 

and at times I shook

for the passage of what could not be

deprived: my forever fingers fastening

on your warm pearls, tugging

still against restraint, my throat.

Copyright © by Jessica Schneider

A video of this poem can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LhEvH1SbywI 

Observation, North America Over Twilight Orion

A waning rain gathers in layers
the sidewalk numbs. Beside a restaurant window, unconscious
shrubbery seeds autumn’s plunge, cool September sloshing
sun.  Silence scales some leafy bower, ordinary trees,
fat apples, and hickory. 

Two creatures, one gray, the other red, mostly speckled
and overfed, each race after the other
in spirals, goes the stubborn game.  Around corners,
sound and grit, street puddles of car slop and city slip,
they clamor upward in this tree.

Which will chase the other out? When berries rot and beetles bury
themselves in soil, resonance coils their star-felt trees to leap north.

Copyright © by Jessica Schneider

A video of this poem can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x34T2sEa_cA&list=UUN5kTfj5u8XcTBg51Z65EKw 

Orchids and everything since

Perfection. And a field
a photo resonates
in passing. As orchids

numerate, [square land]
setting stems writhe
into lyrics, 

moving pictures.
Abstraction undermines
an eye’s permission

to clash detail
branching
vegetation, harmonial 

inheritance. A petal
fuses the fringed
purple breaths, 

symmetrical hearts,
shapes that escape
breeze. Silvering electricity, 

orchids and lilies
pair to orchestrate
seduction, 

vivid as remains
catch and trill
spring, lengthening

lawns. A blaze sings
the waving brushwood,
the flavor of one full note.

Copyright Ó by Jessica Schneider

The animals lay time

Small sea creature, such a range for size
are you, delightful, yet non-specific.
Know your home, coral reefs, the timepieces
of the sea, and further down, a cathedral
of history has met eyes of  great explorers,

and lower still, pharaohs once built structures as you-
throughout the oblivious arranging and rearranging sweep
of the tides, individually phased
by your own mobile, soft and current strength,
moving you just a single inch

within your life. How is it that the whales
perceive their mates, massive barges
from the depths of the salty haze,
spuming their radiant syllables into the open
world, their steep, up roaring bursts that twist,

their free, unrelenting bubbles, spin drifting
no hint into the creation you lead? From the tiny
vortexed spawn of your showers, lifting love
into the seas for intelligent futures to witness this art:

the dominant powers unseal ten thousand years.

Copyright  Ó by Jessica Schneider

A video of this poem can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-EXvslqws8c&list=UUN5kTfj5u8XcTBg51Z65EKw 

Una, Instead
(for the artist in which everyday must be lived)
                       ·        after Robinson Jeffers

Nothing outlasts this envy of the hawks,
we feel. When they touch the top of the sky
inside, it only weighs us further. Away
in the open waves of wind, that own no world,
we notice the idleness of the seas
below. The round, red dawn at the planet’s swirl,
and the forested ground. Our habits touch,
become trees that return to you. For I cannot 

count on such things. Little or nothing takes
me, my dear, the world feels flat when I stand,
oppressed into plane, without your surround
I fear. A home for what is known can put
mountains in your terrain. Rock will always be,
another faraway place we will climb.

Copyright Ó by Jessica Schneider

A video of this poem can be found here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCPncjDXLk4&list=PLTwKY0XeFydOa78AujbXg-PAwhKLJbhvE 

Wild Poppies

Possibility pins to this
awful field, stuck to the canvas
in Monet, who put here
via few brush strokes. The lack of detail
pulls with its marvelous hooks
into the tart earth’s puckering
greens, wonder that can be nice
in nothing ever certain.

The untamed redness awaits,
plucking from the safe life sticks.
At a glance, I fear my disconnecting
one or two, for I pick what is
closest, as my hands cannot nurture
them all at once.  

[Click on the title to see the painting the poem is based on]

Copyright Ó by Jessica Schneider

Les Coquelicots

Il a quelque chose
à faire peur ce pré piqué
sur la toile que Monet
brosse à l'économie. Le détail absent
darde d'étonnantes griffes
sous la fronce verte d'une acerbe
terre, miracle de délicatesse
dans un monde d'incertitude.

L'éruption rouge attend,
sur tiges vitales à l'abri.
J'ai pu en rompre
une ou deux, car mes mains cueillent,
incapables qu'elles sont
de s'occuper de tout à la fois.

Translation Copyright © by Jean Migrenne

Return to Poetry

This Old Poem     Poetry     Contact/Submissions     Statistics     Jessica Schneider's Blog     Chubby Oscar