1
Whole ecosystems upended, bubbles
burst
Despite my feelings of powerlessness, when I dream of smoke, something
bursts into flame
2
Twenty-seven percent of the world supply of lithium
in this desert
Lithium: silvery, slippery, subtle in its aspect
If one added a flash of blue right here
the whole enterprise would go feral
3
Trudging along on creaking crusted snow
I started forward and then I started back
Barnacles too are done for
Did I or did I not aspire to kindness even unto viruses
4
I am more lyric than narrative, more cadence than rhyme
In many situations I feel gauche and out-of-place
Phragmites will overtake continents
Then we’ll see
5
The weather violates its own norms and ethos
Chewed to bits by radical sunlight those floor-length curtains
Once I had seven swans, a hayloft, a meteor
6
An iridescent calling forth a phenomenon occurred
was that me
and the one now ambling among peeling birches
and yellow leaf-fall
feeling the sensation of wading through warm sunlit water
7
Inside a concrete silo we create a virtuoso mural: a Milky Way
of sand, gravel, sticks and stars
Hello apple orchard, hello old stone graveyard, abandoned
even by angels
One may still yearn for one’s very own palace of dolls
—
Jan Conn’s Peony Vertigo, her tenth book, was published by Brick Books, 2023. She is a member of the writing group Yoko’s Dogs whose latest book is Caution Tape (Collusion Books, 2021). As a biologist at The Wadsworth Center, New York State Department of Health, she studies ecology and genetics of mosquitoes that transmit malaria parasites. Her visual art is represented by Lauren Clark Fine Art Gallery, in Great Barrington, MA, where she lives.
