Jennifer Browne

Jennifer Browne falls in love easily with other people’s dogs. She is the author of American Crow (Beltway Editions, 2024) and the poetry chapbooks whisper song (tiny wren publishing, 2023) and The Salt of the Geologic World (Bottlecap Press, 2023). Her work has recently appeared in Poets for Science, Humana Obscura, Trailer Park Quarterly, and One Sentence Poems. She lives in Frostburg, Maryland.

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► Jennifer Browne's microchap & (selected) poems are available below. Download the PDF by clicking the title.

Origami Microchap with Selected Poems

In a Period of Absence, a Lake

Click title to download micro

Cover: ‘Lake George’ John Bunyan Bristol
Courtesy National Gallery of Art,
Washington

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1.
Wind-shaped ice curves the shore,
crusts sedge edges in the marsh.
Each footfall a crunch, and I think
of shrews’ subnivean tunnels,
my boots sink in mud I don’t see.

2,
Why am I surprised at sunrise?
The unexpected color appears
in the west, blush on still-dark
clouds opposite first flashing;
in any room, light falls on you.

I name myself unmoored,
not just a boat that’s slipped
the dock, but grounded
in drought-lake mudflat.
Even if water rushed, how
could I be anything but sunk,
habitat for skittish fish,
hazard on which to catch
a lure and snap a line. Love,
this morning, I can’t tell who
is the boat, the dock, the flat,
Who is casting the bait, but
I see the clove hitch slipped,
lost. I’m not sure where I am.

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