Woman’s Mappa Mundi—The Promontory Imprint
a bubbling gone rogue
my song summons hounds of heaven my lap subsumes fins of all the fathersa dead man’s float
cracked and crashed by a shopping cart gonethe tidelittoral long dead
wave pulls weakdumps old tools for the merman feast tiny pearl to steer by unhoused and flipped
flesh against stone—
a mermaid prone—
Where Did You Flee without a Night for covera shade so handsome
light so brokein a forest gleamed with ambush
you are one tree on the run
why do I take star leaf from your green surroundyour hem of hex the woodcutter cannot reach
your inner ringthe promise of cake
he tells mefells meyou always feel too muchso I slip strangersyou a black locust tree shuddered in pollen where lacewing nymphs move air crumbs our kiss dilates my bonessplits your trunkways of earth crypt plumb
our hands branching into lichen
the truth ismy lying down the north ferrying sugarwater for milk
I climb inside your old crown bell men begging to feel their own bodies
turning with the liquid iron center of the earth if you could grant them what thenstalkers never content at end of the chase licking snowflakes with cat-pink tongues
Jenny Grassl lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her poems have appeared in Ocean State Review, Rogue Agent, and Boston Review‘s annual poetry contest, runner-up prize selected by Mary Jo Bang. She has published poems in Tupelo Quarterly, Bennington Review, Lana Turner Journal, Inverted Syntax, Puerto Del Sol, Massachusetts Review, and many others, and she was a finalist for Radar Poetry’s annual contest. Her poetry was featured in a Best of American Poetry blog. Her manuscript Deer Woman in the Dining Room was runner-up for a Tupelo Press open reading. Her manuscript Magicholia will be published by 3: A Taos Press in 2024. Image: honeybeesuite.com Check out HFR’s book catalog, publicity list, submission manager, and buy merch from our Spring store. Follow us on Instagram and YouTube. Disclosure: HFR is an affiliate of Bookshop.org and we will earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase. Sales from Bookshop.org help support independent bookstores and small presses.
there are no sailors
to risk sirens
sea pig rides the waves
blood chambers of the deep
ship mast skews vertebrae in a puddle
knife shucks openwoman I could be
clenched between fish scale hips
twigging into runes
away to your rub carnalno one can see
and I a woman of deep tissue without skin
a depth you crave
fallen in sweet cicelyhenbit and wintergreen
truck fodder under us for mushroom shovekneading your bast my flesh together
and south of you divides me
your loggers bagging songbirds
and your corona’s magnet leaves
vertigosex and snowone crystalline drop of sap
shouting runpropping you up
felling the clouds
Heavy Feather Review 