Carol Arranges the Bodies
Written by:
JACKIE BRAJE
THREE POEMS
Jackie Braje’s “Carol Arranges the Bodies,” is a part of a longer project she is working on, arising from an email exchange between her and her grandmother. The visual landscape Brajie creates, made knowable through her gentle diction and careful construction of color and sound, brings the reader inside. Being that, all three poems are thematically linked by a feeling of interiority. The interiority of self-reflection, or the interiority of being at home with the people who make it that way.
Carol Arranges the Bodies
Listen along here:
It is said a Mother and Daughter laid alone in front of a screen door, together, for cool air in the summer orchard of Cromwell, IN, but I doubt it, for the dog was also there, for the gladiolas were there, for the father loved the garden for having them, for the future was alone, there, and yet. And the gladiolas, they were there, in the garden—and the gray snake in the cherry tree— and the Mother would hoe the rows and the Daughter would drop the seeds behind her, and the big bearded iris. The green beans. Sweet corn. It was the Mother’s red baseball cap lost to the teeth of the Father’s bailer and it was the Mother’s rage, the Daughter’s broken pinkie. A first class seamstress was the Mother and their bodies there, by the screen door, were gorged in floral yellow and sun.1
John Wayne
I dream about your family, often.
Your mother is dousing the dining room
with kerosene for every witness and
your father is proud of me and your brother
is throwing his wineglass at the kitchen sink,
laughing at the impact and your sister,
she couldn’t be born, I am sorry to say.
Above our bed is a picture of John
Wayne on a California billboard
with daggers of palm fronds threatening
his face (these interest me the most
though I can’t dream about those).
Yes, and wasn’t it good? When he offered
to build his girl a house at the bend
in the river where the cottonwoods grow?
Living Room
What am I looking for?
Innumerable silver pools,
lacerated pools,
fish with their mirroring scales, pools;
I want to be all alone and
merged with you,
do you understand me?
I want to be a body
that isn’t my body
or your body
or anybody.
I found a dog
and called it bird
and you and I are the only
hands she’ll take the
bones from. Here are
all of us in these ill-fitting
forms: glue the feathers
to the bone for me and I
will do the same for her.
1 Carol Arranges the Bodies first appeared in print, published by the literary journal Ninth Letter.
Follow Jackie:
Website: https://www.jackiebraje.me/
Instagram: @jackiebraje
Bio:
Jackie Braje is a Brooklyn based poet. She is the Programs Director of The Poetry Society of New York, the co-founder and Editor-in-Chief of Milk Press, and a Poetry MFA candidate at Brooklyn College. Her work has appeared in The Minnesota Review, The Nottingham Review, Brooklyn Poets, Vagabond City, Waccamaw, Bridge Eight, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of a 2019 Brooklyn Poets Fellowship and a 2020 Mineral School Artist Residency.
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Website: https://www.jackiebraje.me/
Instagram: @jackiebraje
Bio:
Jackie Braje is a Brooklyn based poet. She is the Programs Director of The Poetry Society of New York, the co-founder and Editor-in-Chief of Milk Press, and a Poetry MFA candidate at Brooklyn College. Her work has appeared in The Minnesota Review, The Nottingham Review, Brooklyn Poets, Vagabond City, Waccamaw, Bridge Eight, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of a 2019 Brooklyn Poets Fellowship and a 2020 Mineral School Artist Residency.
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NEW YORK, NEW YORK
EST 2020
︎
© THE QUARTERLESS REVIEW ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
EST 2020
︎
© THE QUARTERLESS REVIEW ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
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